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Fight Kits, USADA, & Courtroom Chaos (Pat Lundvall is a Spiteful Witch Edition)


Elsalvajeloco

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Arthur Jones (Jon Jones brother and defensive end for the Colts) has been suspended for the first 4 games of the NFL season for a PED violation. He must have been sharing tainted supplements with Jon...

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40 minutes ago, Shawn411 said:

Jon brother only going to miss a month basically. Why the penalties in mma so severe? Would an union block these long suspensions?

1. Because those penalties are suppose to be deterrents.

2. Now? Most likely wouldn't matter because the states are now upholding those suspensions and are looking to VADA and USADA on how to treat fighters who have failed tests. Can't put that rabbit back in the hat. Plus, the unions wouldn't be able to negotiate with the commissions, which are government run.

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 minute ago, Craig H said:

I'm surprised that it took this long after the sale for this to be announced. I figured the day after the sale we would hear something about this.

The fighters were talking about it as soon as it happened, but it does take time to mobilize. There was always that chance the sale would fall apart so a lot of those efforts would have been for not. 

This is going to be one of the first true tests of the WME-IMG regime. If they start sending out the emails and other materials to fighters that are anti-union, then we will have our answer. Right now, I have a feeling it might be more of the same. Just my opinion.

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I think you're right regarding this being more of the same. If you're a fighter that has wanted to unionize though, you have to at least feel better about your chances now that mafia hotel owners aren't going to fuck you up.

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43 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I think you're right regarding this being more of the same. If you're a fighter that has wanted to unionize though, you have to at least feel better about your chances now that mafia hotel owners aren't going to fuck you up.

It always matters what the top guys have to say. That's a very small percentage, but they wield the most power. If you have twenty to twenty-five fighters that actually matter to the bottom line and five hundred and fifty that don't in a sport that's individual driven, it's going to be very hard to balance the scale. At any point, which I don't think I've heard anyone talk about yet, the UFC has the ability to prune the roster. So they are free to cut a 1-4 or 3-3 UFC fighter who < 10% of the audience knows and tell him or her good luck unionizing to get more than 3k and 3k in Bellator (before they eventually release you too). Free agency is completely awful right now and has been for awhile. Unless you're a ready made star (which there are fewer and far between now since all the pre-Ultimate Fighter era ex PRIDE/UFC fighters are falling one by one) or fit into a certain niche, you're going to get the same type of deal you had before. A lot of that is on the former UFC regime and a lot of it isn't. You need those 20-25 males and females to have any luck at gaining leverage. Otherwise, it won't matter.

Recently, I have noticed a few bigger name fighters (like Anthony Johnson) who I've never heard utter a single word about union speak up. If those people are only talk, then we know how this is going to go. 

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1 hour ago, TheVileOne said:

Is it far from feasible to change fighter contracts so they are considered full employees with benefits instead of independent contractors?  They already have health benefits set up.

That's going to be up to the UFC.

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30 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

I don't know how possible such a thing is, but if they don't want to deal with unions and avoiding such matters, this could be an avenue to nip this all in the bud. 

I think it's a bit more complex than that because the UFC also has contracts that they can't break. The UFC can't make Reebok spend more than $7 million annually. They can probably make suggestions on restructuring the pay tiers, but it's not something that has to happen. Same with any possible conflicting sponsors that the UFC has and the fighters have.

As for USADA and different drug suspensions, that's going to be a tougher path to navigate because you're adding several parties in that mix. How do you make punishments fairer without encroaching on or eroding the powers of the commissions? Moreover, how do you handle instances where there are places without a commission? "Oh, it's cool. I'm suspended by the UFC (or USADA), but I'm not really under suspension because they can't enforce it and no state has to."

Right now, once you get past the initial excuses, it is "I have to fight to make a living" but rarely are we arriving at the conclusion of "I fucked up and I'll take the two years." It's that problem of "I need to make a living but I don't want to supervise what I put into my body" that goes beyond cheating somehow. If people (whether it is the UFC, the fighters, the media, or whomever) create different narratives and situations, then it's going to have to be addressed or you end up with something even more bizarre than the TRT era. It's a new era, but we're still finding new and more clever ways to avoid accountability. I believe that's where Novitzky and the commission heads would put their foot down if they had any real say. So I can't imagine any potential union (or any competent one) just declining to look at something like that and delegating it to the UFC.

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Well for the longest time, something like the USADA deal was too complex because of the logistics and all the fighters who live overseas, expenses of out-of-competition testing.  But they got it done.  

Too complex doesn't mean impossible.  

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46 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

Well for the longest time, something like the USADA deal was too complex because of the logistics and all the fighters who live overseas, expenses of out-of-competition testing.  But they got it done.  

Too complex doesn't mean impossible.  

The fighters who live overseas was never a big deal (or should have never been one to begin with). People just were ignorant that USADA could do that or already has a history of doing that along with VADA. How the hell did people think they were doing it beforehand? They just flew everyone to one location to take tests?

As far as the costs, that's never really been issue. Dana and Lorenzo, once they made that agreement, said they were willing to pay for it. That was a question answered in the first 20 minutes of that presser. The issue now is more expediting the tests you do administer and how cost effective it is because they're doing so many tests now along with the UFC having a ton of events along with that. However, I don't see that being an issue for very long or being too complex. You either expedite the results for tests of your main event and co-main events fighters or you don't. Simple as that. However, that was something that wasn't raised when this whole thing was announced anyway.

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47 minutes ago, Shawn411 said:

So many factors to consider outside money like USADA, NAC, Ali act. They all have to co exist. Does the union fight for the training camps since they play a major role? This can take years.

I doubt it since camps vary in size and overall value to a promotion. I think any sports league union would at least ideally avoid those conflicts of interest. You don't want a camp like Jackson/Wink get more favorable treatment than say a Daddis Fight Camp or 808 Fight Factory that have one or two UFC fighters. That would be a bad look for the union.

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