Shortly after Quinton Jackson's sudden switch from Bellator to UFC, Scott Coker has stated that he plans to 'protect our contractual rights'. Rampage has released a statement of his own, bringing up that he terminated his contract after a 45-day window to satisfy any contract disputes.
The whole situation seemed like a recipe for legal trouble, so Rampage's manager has issued a statement to MMA Fighting to clear up some of the confusions about his contract with Bellator. Here are a few of the more important snippets:
Bellator was a fairly new Viacom entity and Bjorn used this position to attempt to construct a very interesting and lucrative deal. Bjorn included in the deal a Bellator contract, a Paramount movie deal, a Spike TV reality show provision and a TNA pro wrestling contract. This in effect created an entertainment contract instead of the normal fight contract. In hindsight I think that Bjorn was over zealous with the Viacom networks' assistance he could rely on. Bjorn also submitted a significant pay-per-view model that was crucial to the deal.
According to Jackson's manager, after several issues which included the PPV not being 'successful for our payment structure', they informed Bjorn Rebney about their wish to restructure their deal. Before they were able to meet about it, Rebney was removed and replaced with Coker.
Over a period of four months we have been bouncing between Scott trying to make things happy, and Viacom legal failing to resolve the many impossible breaches promised by Rebney. The one decent part of the entertainment contract was a provision to terminate if breaches cannot be resolved. We were obliged to give a 45-day notice listing the breaches. At the end of the period the contract allows us to terminate in writing to Bellator/Viacom. During this process, Scott Coker attempted to resolve the issues but was unsuccessful. We actually gave Bellator/Viacom 70 days in total. At the end we terminated in writing and informed all parties that we would now be seeking promotional opportunities as a free agent.
The UFC was spoken to and indicated an interest in doing business. They were very careful in reviewing our legal position. Our law firm, the UFC lawyers and an outside law firm all agreed that the termination was legitimate.
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Scott Coker has indicated that a legal position may be taken by Viacom in relation to this but to [paraphrase] him from a recent interview, 'This all begins by Bjorn Rebney giving Quinton a very crazy contract, he would have promised Quinton anything he wanted to get him for the show.' Scott is being honest here and we believe that once the entire thing is reviewed by Viacom that common sense will prevail.
According to the him, Rampage is currently targeting a UFC return around late March to April.