Randy Couture & UFC Settle Lawsuit
Published by Staff on September 2nd, 2008 in Current Events

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By Zach Arnold

Randy Couture said he felt disrespected by UFC management. He said that he wanted to fight Fedor Emelianenko, the world’s best heavyweight MMA fighter. Couture promised to fight UFC tooth-and-nail until he got the respect that he deserved. So what did Randy Couture exactly get for fighting ‘the man’ after a year-long court battle?

A three-fight deal with Zuffa, which begins on November 15th against Brock Lesnar in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Is this the kind of ‘respect’ that Randy Couture wanted to earn after putting himself and everyone else in the MMA industry through a year-long court battle? Remember all the drama surrounding the ‘feud’ between Couture and UFC? It’s amazing what a new contract and money will do to change someone’s attitude.

The short-term ramifications of Couture and UFC kissing-and-making-up are simple. Randy Couture is still the UFC Heavyweight champion. Randy Couture will be defending that very same title against former WWE star Brock Lesnar on November 15th. All the MMA bloggers and fans online will quickly forget what was at stake between Couture and UFC because, hey, they’re about to get their MMA fix again with ‘The Natural’ as the babyface hero again.

Of course, for those of us with long-term memories, the settlement between Couture and UFC signifies something else.

For starters, Randy Couture was the only fighter in a legitimate position to go after UFC in the American court system. Couture reportedly had the support of Mark Cuban in terms of his legal battle. No other MMA fighter in the world currently has the resources to fight Zuffa LLC in an American court. Too much time, too much money. I don’t want to suggest that Couture was on a freeroll here, but he was the only fighter really truly primed to give Zuffa some heartburn in a Las Vegas courtroom. Couture could have challenged several key aspects of a standard UFC fighter contract, such as the champion’s clause or the ‘retirement’ clause. The champion’s clause reportedly states that if your contract expires with UFC and you’re still a UFC champion that you will defend the UFC title at the same fight money as agreed to in the expiring contract. The retirement clause reportedly dealt with the issue of UFC having rights over a fighter if he retires and then tries to get a contract to expire so that they can walk away to another promotion without fulfilling all of the fights on the contract. For a fighter signing what is legally deemed to be a contract for an ‘independent contractor,’ UFC sure maintains a lot of control over their fighters.

With Randy Couture’s settlement today with UFC, you can kiss any further legal challenges goodbye to UFC contracts. Couture had a chance to challenge ‘the man’ and open up the entire fight business in regards to fighters having more of a say against promoters. Thanks to today’s settlement, Couture got what he wanted but nobody else in the business will benefit from it. Dana White has to be breathing a huge sigh of relief, as the business model of UFC will not be attacked any time soon.

The settlement by Couture seems to be oddly-timed. On Thursday, there was supposed to be a court hearing in Las Vegas to determine whether or not Couture would be able to get a jury trial for the lawsuit that UFC filed against him in Clark County, Nevada. If Couture had been able to get a jury trial, it would have been possible for UFC to face a situation where they would have gotten a hung jury verdict against Couture over the breach of contract dispute. So why would Couture give up his legal position now when he fought for so long (well over a year)?

We can only make guesses and assumptions. Let’s throw out some potential reasons why a settlement was reached:

1. Time. Perhaps there is legitimate panic on the part of Randy Couture that a protracted legal battle with UFC would have been waged all the way until 2010. At that point, he would be too old to fight against UFC’s top-level fighters.

2. Money. Besides getting a new UFC contract, there are marketing considerations to consider given that Couture has a bunch of gyms across North America and not being marketed by UFC certainly couldn’t have helped out his business.

3. He really, truly believes that Fedor will end up signing with UFC and that Affliction is dead in the water.

Whatever the case may be for Randy Couture’s settlement with UFC today, the fact is that we saw a fighter who had a real shot of challenging a major empire in the fight world. Instead, the fighter protected his own interests first and foremost instead of displaying a care about the potential long-term outcome that could have resulted if the lawsuit in Las Vegas proceeded. As with the case with wrestlers in the 1980s who could have stood up to Vince McMahon, Randy Couture in the end blinked with UFC. The chances of a fighter’s union or fighter’s association just greatly diminished.