(This is the first installment of a two-part series on ongoing efforts to organize MMA fighters. Part two is here.)

In November 2008, just three months after he lost a unanimous decision to Georges St-Pierre for the UFC welterweight title, Jon Fitch was cut from the UFC roster for the first time. It happened quickly, and then it was over quickly, but it left a strong impression on Fitch, and in some ways he’s still feeling the effects.

According to Fitch, the roster cut had nothing to do with his loss in the title fight. Instead, he said, it was his refusal to sign a lifetime agreement authorizing Zuffa, the UFC’s parent company, to use his likeness in a video game to be released by THQ.

Life seemed like an awful long term for such a contract, so Fitch and his management – Zinkin Entertainment and Sports Management Group – tried to negotiate a five- or 10-year term, he said. UFC officials weren’t interested. When Fitch wouldn’t sign, he said, they fired him, and then they threatened to do the same to every other fighter from American Kickboxing Academy, where Fitch trained, as well as to every other fighter represented by Zinkin Entertainment. (UFC officials declined to comment on this claim, citing Fitch’s involvement in pending legal action against them.)

In an interview with Yahoo! Sports shortly after Fitch was cut, UFC President Dana White railed against Fitch, and against AKA and Zinkin Entertainment.

“We’re looking for guys who want to work with us and not against us, and frankly I’m just so (expletive) sick of this (expletive) it’s not even funny,” White told Yahoo! Sports. “Affliction is still out there trying to build its company. Let (Fitch) go work with them. Let him see what he thinks of those (expletives). (Expletive) him. These guys aren’t partners with us. (Expletive) them. All of them, every last (expletive) one of them.”

At first, Fitch said, he was ready to accept the release. He had plans to sign with rival promotion Strikeforce, which operated mostly in the Bay Area, where AKA was based.

“I probably would have made more money in sponsors that way, because it was local,” Fitch told MMAjunkie. “I would have had a great career leaving Zuffa (UFC’s parent company) and going to Strikeforce at that time. I did not do that because I was told that if I did not sign, every member of AKA would be removed from the UFC, and no member of our management group, Zinkin Entertainment, would be allowed to fight for the UFC ever again. I signed to save my team.”

It was around this time that an Arizona real estate lawyer named Rob Maysey approached Fitch. He said he wanted to talk to the fighter and his teammates about a fighters association. The way Maysey explained it, Fitch’s situation was exactly the kind of thing that an association could help fighters avoid, since it would give them the collective-bargaining power to get better deals on things like likeness rights, as well as protect members from retaliatory roster cuts. Fitch recognized that there was some sense in what Maysey was telling him, he said, but at the time he brushed him off.

“He was just some guy in a suit telling us stuff,” Fitch said. “We didn’t know what to think. We didn’t know if he was some crazy fan or what.”

So Fitch signed away his likeness rights and was welcomed back into the UFC. His exile lasted one day, and he thought that was the end of it. He had no idea that, following a second cut from the UFC roster, he’d eventually find himself one of several plaintiffs in a class-action antitrust suit against the UFC’s parent company. He also didn’t know, though maybe he should have, that it would be Maysey who’d play a pivotal role in getting him there.

‘These guys aren’t untouchable’

Seven years later, it’s still a little tough to know what to make of Maysey. A former college baseball player with a degree from Cornell Law School, his specialty is real-estate law, which normally does not bring one into the sphere of professional fighters all that often. But for Maysey, the desire to see fighters band together in some form of union seems to be a passion bordering on obsession.

He’s been involved since at least 2006, when he convinced Sean Sherk, who would later become the UFC lightweight champion, to wear an MMA Fighters Association logo for his bout against Nick Diaz at UFC 59. Since then, Maysey said, he’s conducted more secret meetings than he can count, trying to get fighters behind his vision for the MMFA. He’s also operated the @MMAFA Twitter account since 2009, though he insisted that none of his efforts are motivated by the hope of financial gain for himself.

“I start off every meeting I go to by saying, ‘I don’t own this, I’m not a member of this, and this is yours,’” Maysey said. “The members decide by vote who they want to lead it.”

As for why he decided to get involved in the first place, Maysey cites an intersection of interests and expertise. On one hand, he said, athletes’ rights are a personal issue to him. After he watched his older brother, Matt Maysey, struggle through the ups and downs of life in Major League Baseball, he appreciated the need for collective representation in professional sports.

He also happened to know a little something about antitrust law, he said, which is how he knew that eventually the UFC would have to choose between recognizing a fighters association or else defending itself against antitrust claims in court. That’s the path that other athlete associations, such as the NFL Players Association, used to make headway with their causes, so why couldn’t it work for fighters?

In some ways, Maysey insisted, it already has.

“Before this antitrust suit, you saw very little resistance or willingness to fight,” Maysey said. “Since the filing of that lawsuit, you’re seeing more resistance. I think that’s kind of the nature of the beast. Something like this shows the other fighters, these guys aren’t untouchable.”

But the goal of the lawsuit isn’t just to encourage other fighters. It’s also, according to Maysey, to force the UFC to change how it does business, and in major ways. He’s advocating for widespread reforms, including applying some form of the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act to MMA. Changes like that could drastically change how the UFC operates, or even render its business model untenable.

That’s obviously not anything that the UFC will accept without a fight, which is why Maysey said he expects a long court battle ahead. But just because it won’t be easy, Maysey insisted, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

“Management’s greatest tactic is to put so much fear in fighters that they think it is impossible,” Maysey said. “That is what management wants, for fighters to believe it is too difficult and impossible. But it has been done. It is not impossible. It is not even that hard, and it is good business for the athletes.”

‘Important Message From The UFC’

In years past, UFC executives often struck a mildly indifferent tone whenever the question of a fighters association arose.

“We have no role,” UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta said when asked about the possibility of a union at a UFC Fan Expo in 2010. “So we’re not in a position to say we support it or we’re against it. That’s entirely up to (the fighters).”

That tone underwent a drastic shift recently, however, shortly after Culinary Workers Union Local 226 – a union that has butted heads with UFC owners for years as part of its ongoing feud with the Fertitta-owned Station Casinos – announced a joint effort with Teamsters Local 986 to organize MMA fighters in the UFC. That prompted swift, aggressive action from the UFC, which sent out two separate emails in the month after the announcement warning fighters away from this organizing effort.

In the first email, titled, “Important Message From The UFC” and dated Aug. 8, UFC Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Kirk Hendrick told fighters that they “may see media reports in the days ahead about some union tactics that are both shameful and pathetic.” He then went on to summarize the long and bitter history between the Culinary Workers Union and the UFC, pointing out that the same union had created a website – Unfitforchildren.org, which appears to have only recently been taken down – in order to “try and hurt the UFC, the sport of MMA and the very same athletes that they suddenly claim to care so much about.”

The email also informed fighters that, “as a matter of law,” a union can’t organize UFC fighters because they are classified as independent contractors rather than employees.

In the second email, titled “Message from UFC” and dated Sept. 2, Hendricks outlined for fighters a series of hypothetical situations that could occur “if you sign a union card.”

Those included potentially losing “the advantages and benefits of being an independent contractor,” as well as being forced “to be completely submissive to union bosses and individuals who have not spent a day in the mixed martial arts business.”

“They could be in control, not you,” Hendrick warns twice, in bold, underlined type.

UFC officials would only answer questions from MMAjunkie via email, but they did not dispute the characterization of theirs as a strong response to the announcement from the Culinary Workers Union.

“If you mean we took an aggressive stance against the Culinary Union’s tactics, we agree,” UFC officials wrote. “Our position was strong because we believe there is a manipulation of information going on and we wanted to clear the air.”

According to UFC officials, their opposition is chiefly to this specific union, not to the idea of a fighters association in general. At the same time, the UFC’s vision for how a fighters association might work with a promoter, if at all, might not look like anything Maysey and others have in mind.

“The issue isn’t whether athletes can have an association,” UFC officials wrote. “They can have as many associations, clubs, etc. they want. The issue is what relationship such groups would seek to create with the UFC. By law, if a group wants to deal with an ‘employer’ over terms and conditions of employment they potentially could be found to be a ‘labor organization,’ also known as a union. Since athletes that compete in the UFC are independent contractors, it is important for UFC to not deal with any particular group in the absence of properly controlled circumstances. To do otherwise might create the presumption that the group is a recognized union. That is not the structure of this industry or of this company, and we don’t think it is the appropriate structure for a sport between individual athletes.”

Many of the fighters MMAjunkie spoke to for this story said they unaware of any organizing effort until they received the emails about it from the UFC. Most said they had not been contacted by representatives from the Teamsters or the Culinary Workers Union, and few said they had spoken to anyone associated with the MMAFA. Every fighter MMAjunkie spoke to, however, said they had some prior knowledge of the battle between the Culinary Workers Union and the UFC.

According to several fighters who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic, the emails from the UFC seemed like an indication that fighters should tread carefully with regards to union issues.

“They’re scared,” said one current UFC fighter, who asked not to be named. “That’s the first thing I thought when I saw those emails.”

One person who wasn’t surprised to see the emails was Gary Ibarra, a manager who represents several current UFC fighters, including some involved in the class-action lawsuit. He also represents UFC middleweight Cung Le, who butted heads with the UFC after an alleged failed drug test following a fight in Macau, where the UFC acted as its own regulator and conducted its own drug testing. After Le and Ibarra raised questions about the testing protocol, the UFC eventually rescinded Le’s suspension, but not without a fight.

As a former organizer for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Ibarra knows as well as anyone how organizing efforts are typically received on both the worker and management sides of the equation. Emails warning workers about the perils of a union are common practice, according to Ibarra, whether the company sending them out is Walmart or Blue Diamond Growers.

“Those letters that companies like to send out to employees telling them, ‘This is the only reason this union wants you to join,’ those are usually horsesh-t,” Ibarra said. “There’s usually very little truth to them. In this case, there might be. Because it’s been well-documented before this that the Culinary Workers Union has a thing for the UFC.”

But according to Fitch and Maysey, as well as others involved in the antitrust suit, the Culinary Workers Union is not involved in their effort to organize fighters.

“That’s Zuffa trying to confuse the issue,” said Nate Quarry, another former UFC fighter and class-action lawsuit plaintiff who has been outspoken in favor of a fighters association. “We are not working with the Culinary Union. They do not represent us.

“In the beginning we thought maybe they might be in alignment with what we are trying to accomplish, but then they took off on their own. They stepped up and made a statement saying they were going to unionize fighters and all that, but not a single person who’s actually involved in the (Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association) actually said that. None of us said, ‘Yes, the Culinary Union is on our side.’ That’s misdirection by Zuffa.”

But the exact nature of the involvement of unions like the Teamsters and the Culinary Workers remains murky. A request for comment from the Culinary Workers Union was redirected to Chris Griswold, the secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 986. Griswold said that fighters had reached out to both the Teamsters and the Culinary Workers Union, looking more for guidance and support than for inclusion among those established unions.

“We aren’t trying to get the fighters in our organization,” Griswold said. “We want to see them have their own association.”

As for why fighters might have sought help from the Teamsters and Culinary Workers Union in the first place, Griswold pointed to their influence in Las Vegas, the so-called fight capital of the world.

“There’s a big base of fighters in Las Vegas, and the Culinary Workers and the Teamsters are the two powerful unions in Las Vegas,” Griswold said. “They know we’ve had fights with Station Casinos, quite frankly, so they know that we can fight the Fertittas, and they know we’ve been successful in fighting these people. So they’re looking to us for some assistance and some leadership.”

Griswold also encouraged fighters to seek more info from FightersAgenda.org, a website that claims to be “maintained by the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, the Nevada affiliate of UNITE HERE, the union for hospitality workers in North America.”

The mixed messages about which unions are or are not involved in the push for a fighters association have become a cause for concern for many fighters. Even those who support the idea of an association in theory say they’re concerned about the ulterior motives of a group like the Culinary Workers Union.

As one fighter put it, what happens if the UFC owners sell the organization at some point? Would unions that were interested in MMA mainly as another front in their battle against the Fertittas still be as passionate about fighter rights once it no longer served their other causes?

Josh Samman, a UFC middleweight who’s penned editorials for websites like BloodyElbow.com and UFC.com, said he remains unconvinced that the Culinary Workers Union isn’t involved in this effort on some level. If nothing else, Samman said, the confusion over it seems to indicate a troubling lack of organization.

“They may have tried to distance themselves from (the Culinary Workers Union) once they realized what the response would be,” Samman said. “But to me, if they didn’t do the due diligence before now to realize that that would be a terrible idea and to keep them from even entering the conversation, that doesn’t scream confidence to me.”

‘These people are risking their futures on you’

As several fighters pointed out, confidence in the leaders of this organizing effort is vital for those considering whether to get involved. Any UFC fighter who speaks out in favor of a fighters association could risk serious career consequences, and all of them seem keenly aware of this.

That’s not to say that the potential rewards couldn’t eventually justify the risk, according to one fighter who asked not to be named.

“I think fighters would be willing to stick their necks out if it seemed like there was something in place,” the fighter said. “Just to speak up and say, ‘Hey, we need a union,’ and get immediately cut, that would be crazy.”

According to Ibarra, that element of confidence and faith in the leadership is essential in any organizing effort, and it’s what may be missing so far in the push by Maysey and others.

The lawsuit, if successful, could “put the UFC in a state where it has to recognize a fighters association,” Ibarra said, but that’s the long way around, and it could take years. If fighters were willing to band together behind a few key figures, an association could be formed almost overnight.

But that would require the public support of the right fighters at the right time, which has so far been hard to come by in MMA.

“Trust is the biggest thing you need because these people are risking their futures on you,” Ibarra said. “That depends on their ability to believe what you say, that if you all ride out the storm together they’ll come out on the other side better for it, that takes trust. And that’s one of the things that’s lacking right now in this situation, in my opinion.”

Another fighter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he supported the idea of a fighters association added that, if he were asked to take any action to help bring it about, his response would be to ask which other fighters were willing to make the same commitment. Because so far, he pointed out, the most vocal supporters for a fighters association often seem to be those outside the UFC, or at least those advanced enough in their careers that they don’t have to worry as much about the consequences of speaking out.

“How I see it is, there’s no way you’re going to get this to work unless you get some champions on board,” he said. “And then you have to get the champions and some other fighters to agree on a certain day, a certain event, to say, ‘We’re not going to fight unless you recognize our association.’ Otherwise, there’s no way it’ll work. But I’m not sure how you get there.”

Not many people are, which might be why it hasn’t happened yet. But, proponents are quick to point out, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually. And the more you talk to fighters and their managers, the more you hear nearly unanimous agreement that some form of fighter association is needed in MMA, for a variety of reasons.

Part two: What would a fighters association do for its members? It’s about more than money, proponents say

