Late on Sunday night in the Western Hemisphere, Asian fight promotion ONE Championship sent out a press release announcing big changes to its “agent certification” program.

According to the release, any agent “representing any ONE Championship athlete must be accredited with the ONE Agent Certification” – an accreditation that could be denied or revoked at the “sole discretion” of the fight promotion.

“At ONE Championship, we are always upgrading and improving all of our systems and processes across the company to ensure a healthy ecosystem for all parties,” ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong is quoted as saying in the release. “For as many decades as I can remember, agent and manager fraud has always been a big problem in Asia. ONE Championship aims to create a healthier, happier, and safer environment for our athletes both in and out of the arena.”

But as longtime fighter managers in the U.S. looked over the “eligibility criteria” outlined in the release, their concerns grew. The email from ONE Championship outlined five minimum requirements for agent certification:

Currently a resident in Asia for at least one (1) year

No prior criminal record

No history or current ongoing matters of legal or lawsuit activity with any athlete

A minimum of 10 years of related experience in the martial arts industry

Must possess a College or University Degree

Jason House, CEO of Iridium Sports Agency, wasn’t pleased with at least one aspect of those requirements.

Requiring an Agent to live in Asia for a year is absurd. No other Professional Sports league in the world requires that. https://t.co/q745nzbMM3 — Jason House (@IridiumSports) April 29, 2019

House isn’t against the idea of agent certification, he told MMA Junkie. He received a similar certification to represent NFL players, he said – a process that runs through the NFL Players Association and not the league itself, he added.

But the Asian residency requirement left him especially perplexed.

“I really don’t know why they’d include that or even feel it was necessary, especially since they’ve been signing a lot of talent globally,” House told MMA Junkie. “I tweeted those things because I was frustrated at the idea that I wouldn’t be able to represent fighters there because I don’t live in Asia, but I do think the overall concept is very good. I just want to make sure it’s a fair playing field for all of us. I don’t think any other sport in the world would deny certification because of where you live.”

That sentiment was echoed by other longtime managers who currently represent fighters in the organization. ONE Championship officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment by MMA Junkie.

Malki Kawa, who helped engineer the “trade” that saw former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson sign with ONE Championship while former ONE Championship welterweight champion Ben Askren moved to the UFC, said he expects that the organization will make exceptions for established agents when it comes to the minimum requirements.

“I’ve already been told they’re going to work with some non-Asian residents, and I believe I’m one of them,” Kawa said. “They’re going to carve out an exception for me or they’ll never get another one of my fighters. It’s as simple as that. If you’re sitting here talking to me about my guys who are coming up on contracts, looking for certain dudes, and you want to be in the mix when there’s free agents? You’re not going to take yourself out of that just because I’m an American agent and not an Asian one. That’s ridiculous.”

But there are also legitimate questions to be asked about whether or not the promoter can possibly institute such a certification program without creating a conflict of interest. In declaring certain agents ineligible, the company is essentially determining who can and can’t negotiate on the behalf of its fighters, giving the fighters themselves limited say in the matter.

As Iridium’s House pointed out, that could force fighters toward new managers they don’t know and away from others they already trust.

“Some of these fighters are managed by their coaches or their dads or whoever, because that’s who they feel comfortable with,” said House. “Say that person doesn’t have a college degree, or say he hasn’t been in the business for 10 years, whatever. That puts the fighter in a tough spot if he’s now forced to seek out new management when he’s happy with his current situation.”

To further complicate matters, ONE Championship recently announced the launch of its own management firm, ONE Elite Agency, which Sityodtong described as an “invitation-only sports agency reserved for the top 10 percent of athletes in ONE Championship who show the biggest global hero promise in and out of the circle of competition.”

That move was already raising eyebrows among MMA managers, according to Kawa, even before the news of the certification program created the possibility of further limitations on athlete representation.

“That part’s stupid, and you can put that clear as day in your story,” Kawa said. “That part’s stupid, and I think it’s a big conflict. They shouldn’t have done that.”

But Alex Davis, who manages a number of high-profile fighters in the UFC as well as ONE Championship, still saw it as a move with more positives than negatives. While there exists the potential for conflicts as long as the fight promotion itself is in charge of agent certification, he questioned what other organization would be in a position to enforce a standard of behavior or baseline qualifications.

“I think it’s needed, and I don’t know what other way there is of doing it, or who else would be in an impartial position to certify managers,” Davis said. “It’s a mess right now. Here in the States, you have athletic commissions that sometimes have rules about how managers can operate, but they really don’t do anything about it.”

Of course, Davis added, the downside is that a promoter could potentially use a certification program to freeze certain managers out, or simply wield the threat in order to bend a manager to its will. But until MMA has an active athletes association similar to those in other major sports, settling on an unbiased certification body could prove difficult.

In the meantime, Davis said, there exists no real barrier to entry in MMA management. Anyone who can convince a fighter to think of him as such can become a manager overnight, regardless of whether that person is qualified or capable.

“I’m interested to see how it works,” Davis said. “Doing it this way might create new problems, but if we don’t do anything, we’ll just end up stuck in the same place forever. We’ve already seen how that goes.”

For more on ONE Championship’s upcoming schedule, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.