UFC 129 Fighter Randy Couture Talks Unions, Health Insurance and MMA's Future

Those who are freakishly talented and have a publicized amateur career and those who have run out of options in life. Sad but true. 90% of people who get a specialized degree or recieve a masters are on a much better position then most ufc fighters.

Baseball has something that I think is called a 10-5 program that gives health insurance and a retirement package to any player who has played in the bigs for 10 years and on one team for 5. If the UFC could switch it to something like 15-5 or any numbers that make sense (in this case 15 established professional fights, 5 fights under a Zuffa banner) they could at least get guys health insurance after they retire. I don’t think that would be troublesome and I think a lot of guys would contribute to that sort of plan if it was an option.

The UFC could do a retirement plan. A lot of plans are portable nowadays, which means they could take it to their next job or whatever. There’s absolutely no reason for UFC fighters not to have retirement plans.

A retirement plan starting for fighters who fight at least 10 times for Zuffa would be nice, but the fighters would have to realize that the money for that plan is going to start coming out of the fighter pay pool right now. The point is also valid that they would be at more of a risk of getting cut at after fight 8 or 9 for the promotion.

I really think UFC could do the health insurance, and I’m surprised they don’t In order to put the best product possible out there you need the fighters to get and stay healthy, so this makes sense. No offense meant here to the Doctors in other countries, but why have guys messing around with Doctors in Brazil, and other locations when the best sports medicine guys in the World are in the US.

How would health insurance work for MMA? Do you lose it as soon as they cut you?

i’ve got $20,000 dollars in the bank. i’ll never have to work another day in my life.

financial irresponsibility is the problem of the “rich fighter” that just made $10,000 and thinks he’s loaded. i know a guy that had to take a fiscal responsiblity class in order to keep his house. it didn’t change a thing. he still pisses all of his money away as if he won’t get paid by his employer until he spends all of his last check.

sorry, but fighters don’t deserve our sympathy just because we enjoy watching them work. does anyone think that there is a single fighter out there that gives two shits about your job, your health or your retirement?

You’re better off asking Obama for insurance.

Retirement wise. I believe the fighters should be responsible for their own money management and take the initiative themselves to learn about what to do with their money. It’s not up to the UFC to tell people how to live their lives responsibly, these are grown men (and women now with Strikeforce) that should be able to take care of their own financial issues. Read some books, take some classes and stop relying on everyone else.

I don’t want to even touch all the health care issues.

This just illustrates how difficult it’s going to be to get a zuffa-union together (and honestly, people should start pushing and calling it that, because an mma-wide union isn’t going to happen, and it will probably be a lot more effective if it happens now while everyone is one big happy family, than waiting for the next next-Pride to pop up and fail).

Randy has been one of the biggest proponents for getting more benefits, and he is talking like this, how are they going to get the top guys who are happy involved, and how are they going to convince a guy who is making peanuts in the regional circuit that zufa’s 8k/8k deal is bad because it doesn’t have (insert benefit here).

in lottery winners. Bottom line is at some point one must take responsibility for oneself. With the amount made, they can invest a little into themselves and learn about money. Or stop making every ego buy you run in to. Add them both together and the money will last.

To saving for retirement: since the UFC contracts are negotiated between the UFC and the fighter, if the UFC wants to ensure that the fighters save some money for post-UFC life, they should put that in the 2nd or 3rd contract that the fighter signs (not much point for the guys who do 2-3 fights and wash out, but if they are keepers, different story). For example, for every paycheck the fighter gets, 10-20% is taken out and put into an investment fund that the fighter technically can take out and spend, but that the UFC strongly recommends you do not touch, and learn to live on the remainder of the paycheck. The fighters’ managers should also encourage this saving. Because this method of saving requires no effort on the fighter’s side, it’s better than simply educating them, giving them their full paycheck and expecting them to invest it wisely. It also has the added benefit of being liquid funds you can draw on in an emergency, unlike superannuation Australian style (not sure how accessible the US version is). So if you decide you want to use it for health insurance or to treat a medical issue, you can access it but selling the units of the fund (again a scrupulous manager could help fighters who have no clue about this). The UFC has to put in a very small amount of effort to do this: identify a fairly safe, diversified fund with reasonable returns (or several options for the fighters to pick) and shunt part of the pay into that fund for each payday. Each fighter would have their own account. This is not a pool. It’s not foolproof – spendthrifts can simply sell their units and piss them down the drain, of course.

Health insurance: I don’t think this will happen across the board at the UFC due to the independent contractor issue. Everyone therefore has to make their own decision about whether this is worthwhile. For many years, as a healthy person who never uses any sort of medical, I felt it was unnecessary and avoided it. Bottom line is, some people are more injury prone, and fighters in particular take higher risks of injury. Each fighter needs to make their own decision of whether it is worth it to pay expensive rates for something they may or may not use, or to only pay when they need treatment. If you’re good enough to be earning a decent paycheck after a few years fighting, I think the individual fighter (advised by competent management) should be able to assess how injury prone they are and decide whether they need to allocate part of their pay to insurance. If, after say 5 years, they aren’t able to win enough money, I’d strongly recommend a career move. No point fighting for 5000/5000 forever, when you have physical talents which could be better applied in a full time, secure job. PE teacher, fitness trainer, martial arts instructor, manual labour, trades, for anyone who doesn’t have the interest/capability to go study something at university. Sure there are a few guys that struggled for many years and finally broke through but for your average guy this isn’t the case. But the simple answer is: if you can’t bear the cost of being a fighter, if you can’t survive on fighters’ wages, don’t be a pro fighter. Do it as a hobby and find another line of full time work.

seems like pretty no one on this thread understands economics, the world of personal finance, how unions affect a labor market, and personal responsibility in general. I honestly don’t mean to sound like a condescending prick bc I’m sure most of you are smart, well-meaning mma fans, but c’mon guys!

where to begin. it seems to me most everyone on this thread is operating on two presumptions: 1.) that fighters should be ENTITLED to health insurance they (for some reason) shouldn’t have to pay for themselves; and 2.) that fighters shouldn’t have to work once they decide to retire from fighting (hence the clamoring for retirement plans).

let’s first consider an important fact: no one is forcing these guys to be professional fighters. they choose to do it knowing full well that many of them could make more money and get better benefits doing something else. but because we, the fans, enjoy watching these athletes perform, it is held that they should somehow be entitled to certain benefits/lifestyles that your average, work-a-day american isn’t. I will never understand this mindset. (I can see it now: “no, we’re saying they should be entitled to the same benefits that the average american already gets.” not true. the average american independent contractor pays his own health insurance and provides for his own retirement. end of story)

next, it’s a pretty good deal that Zuffa covers any injuries the fighters sustain in the ring. why does Zuffa need to treat these grown men like children and make sure they’re getting health insurance and saving for retirement when any responsible adult is more than capable of doing these things on his own? it is an infinitely better arrangement to pay the fighters a little more and let each fighter decide for himself what kind of health insurance plan (if any) he wants for himself than it is to pay the fighters a little less and provide the coverage for them. Zuffa’s fighter roster isn’t so big that they’re going to enjoy much, if anything, in the way of savings due to insurance pooling, so losing the ability to choose from a plethora of health plans in exchange for two or three Zuffa-provided coverage options—at the cost of lower purses for the fighters—simply makes no sense.
as to retirement savings, again, Zuffa already provides counseling on this sort of thing much like other sports leagues do. that is already going above and beyond their actual responsibility; they’re just being magnanimous. that should be good enough. Zuffa shouldn’t have to hold anyone’s hand and withold a portion of his purse and set it aside for his retirement; ANY financial advisor in the world can do that for a fighter if the fighter simply picks up a telephone. many of you have suggested (with a tone of profundity) that Zuffa should do this for their fighters. why? again, the financial advising industry exists for this very reason. this service is ALREADY available to fighters without Zuffa having to do ANYTHING.

ask yourselves: why isn’t anyone clamoring for a pro boxers’ union? or pro tennis players’ union? if they already exist then I will stand totally corrected, but I’ve never heard of them. I’m gonna guess the reason for the selective outrage here is bc athletes in those sports tend to make so much more than mma fighters that no one’s concerned about boxers and tennis players. if that’s the case, it seems to me we have reduced the issue here to many mma fans wanting to give mma fighters the “benevolent big brother” treatment. I would contend that these guys don’t need to be nannied; they’re adults.
also, concerning retirement, keep in mind that most fighters who have a good run in the sport will retire around 35. that still leaves them a good 30 YEARS to work before they’re what is generally considered “retirement age”. in that time, any one of them could go on to become a doctor, lawyer, or a freaking astronaut if they so choose. 30 years is a long long time. if they have nothing saved by the time they get done with their professional mma career, it’s not exactly a personal financial crisis.

this has gotten lengthy and I haven’t even touched on the union issue yet, so I’ll have to get to it later. for now, suffice to say that I am vehemently anti-union in general UNLESS your job regularly entails danger to your physical well-being, like most sports do. for this reason, I am actually for a fighter’s union, just as I am for the NFLPA et al, coal miners unions, steel workers unions, etc. however, a fighter’s union is problematic and there are issues to be considered which I haven’t heard addressed yet on this forum. but I’ll have to save it for later.

ok, back for more. let’s get down to unions.

first, everyone in here who thinks unions are so great seem to think that unions get workers “higher pay and better benefits” as if by magic. they don’t. if there is one principle in economics that both conservative and liberal economists will agree on, it is this: there is no free lunch. You cannot get something for nothing in economics. so, how does this axiom apply to unions?

because unions demand higher pay, better benefits, etc for their workers. but, knowing that you can’t get something for nothing, what is the trade-off? you see, the unions are telling the employers, "Ok look, these employees agreed to be hired at a certain wage (what we call in economics the “market clearing wage” or the “equilibrium wage”). however, we want more than that. we want an even higher wage for our services." so let’s say the employer agrees. what happens is, since the employer is now forced to pay a wage higher than what the labor market would bear on its own, the employer can no longer afford to hire AS MANY workers, since each worker now costs more. so the point is that labor unions DRIVE UP UNEMPLOYMENT in a labor market.

so, say before the union forms, you have fighter A,B,C,D,E,F,G, and H. they get paid what the company can afford to pay them. then the union comes along and says, “our fighters are unionized now, we demand better pay.” the employer is forced to do it but, since the employer doesn’t have any more money now than it did before, and is required to pay each fighter a higher wage, what happens? fighters G and H get laid off. their wages are now ZERO. so, unions are great for the people who can still get jobs, but they’re terrible for the people who are rendered unemployed because of the union’s demands on the employer.

it has been mentioned in this thread that every union anyone’s ever heard of have seniority systems where the more senior employees are protected at the expense of the more junior employees. like it has also been mentioned, if you can work just hard enough not to get fired as a union employee, you can be a gigantic piece of shit and the employer (and fellow employees!) cannot get rid of you! I’ve worked in a union shop before and I can tell you, this SUCKS. seniority systems also have implications should the employer have to lay workers off. people start getting axed from the bottom up, even if workers more senior to them are the pieces of shit. they also MUST get axed even if both the individual worker and the employer were willing to keep the employee around at a lower wage, rather than face a layoff; the union will not allow it. so, bottom line: unions aren’t all peaches and cream.

but does any of this even matter anyway? these fighters are not Zuffa’s employees. they are independent contractors. I’m not sure how you unionize against someone who isn’t even your employer.

many of the suggestions on this thread, for both unionization and health insurance, have gone something like this: "well, there should be a system in which you don’t get it at first, but after you’ve been around for 4 or 5 fights, you should get union membership/health insurance/back rubs/whatever. the problem with these plans is that they create an incentive for the UFC to start cutting people right before those people become eligible for the benefits. if there’s a guy you’re on the fence about who, after one more fight, is gonna start costing you more money than you think he’s probably worth, it makes sense to cut him now and save yourself the hassle of trying to do it down the road.

if there was a union for all pro mma fighters, that would make more sense, but low-level guys are gonna have SUCH a hard time getting into it that it would become pretty much self-defeating. remember, there is only one NFL, one NBA, one MLB, one NHL. but there are NUMEROUS pro mma fight promotions, just as there are many boxing organizations and boxing promoters who, again, as far as I know, have no union.

it’s a sticky situation for sure.