Sports Agent and Sports Lawyer Blog

Sports lawyers around the country are starting to take increasing notice of MMA. As MMA moves further into the mainstream and the amount of money at stake continues to soar, you may see more lawsuits such as the Fedor-Affliction Entertainment dispute currently raging in California.

This week the court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss, which is not necessarily a harbinger of things to come, as the standard to survive a motion to dismiss is not a high threshold. Sherdog provides its usual expert analysis and summary of the sports lawsuit by attorney J.R. Riddell:

In the suit, the world’s No. 1-ranked heavyweight and M-1 claim that Affliction breached the “Fight Agreement” requirement to stage and promote a third bout for the fighter after advertised opponent Josh Barnett was refused a license in California for an alleged positive steroids test two weeks before the event. They claim that Affliction did not undertake “all reasonable efforts” to find a fighter to replace Barnett, and even go so far as to argue that Affliction lost interest in promoting the third bout partly because it was apparently pursuing a competing objective at the same time -- repairing its soured relationship with competing promoter, Zuffa LLC, parent company to the UFC. Shortly after Affliction’s decision to cancel the event, the UFC announced that it had reached a sponsorship agreement to allow the previously banned clothing brand back into its shows.

These days, anyone who is looking to dabble in MMA can find a local gym with an octagon and a trainer willing to train you to be the next UFC star. Now, however, UFC itself has taken the grass roots concept to a new level.

I have said before that UFC has been savvy in its growth efforts over the past several years as the sport has gradually shifted into the mainstream. The latest venture, UFC-branded fitness center, is just the next step in the process.

The gym features the traditional assortment of weights, treadmills, exercise bikes and other aerobic equipment, along with television monitors and blaring music. But the major differences are the obvious UFC trappings. An Octagon in the center of gym is used for martial arts classes. Huge wall photos of UFC Hall of Famers and life-sized cardboard cutouts of current stars decorate the interiors.

The idea is brilliant, as it exposes several types of fans to the sports. First, you have the amateur and budding MMA fighters who love the sport, practice it at an amateur level and maybe hope to hit the big time. Next, you have the casual fans who will work out at the gym, never set foot in the Octagon, but absorb the MMA theme, and become interested in the sport. The concept additionally provides an extra income stream to UFC fighters, as individual stars will have their names applied to each gym.

It also is another way of breaking down whatever negative stigmas exist by making the brand name part of communities and marketing the fighters as larger-than-life stars to families. It also creates new venues to market the company’s stars and major events, as part of the concept includes regular personal appearances by fighters at the gyms.

As always with ventures spearheaded by Dana White, this development bears watching for agents and sports lawyers who are thinking of expanding their base into representing MMA fighters.

After news that Charles “Krazy Horse” Bennett was arrested yet again last week, you have to wonder how long he will continue to last as a big-time fighter.

Last week he was arrested for fighting a teammate. This sounds like something out of a bad movie:

“During routine sparring, tempers flared between Charles and the other fighter, and Charles ended up getting dropped by the larger training partner,” wrote Vaughn. “They were quickly broken up and Charles left the mat, got dressed and left the building. He returned about 15 minutes later, walked down to the training area and pulled out a heavy piece of steel he must have found in the parking lot and began attacking the other fighter (from behind) with intent to do serious damage. He was tackled by two other fighters and disarmed.

The incident in isolation might not have been significant, but it is yet another in Bennett’s long history of legal problems. The Sherdog.com article notes that he has been arrested for crimes ranging from “traffic violations and drug distribution to kidnapping and battery upon a pregnant female.”

The reason we need to keep an eye on this sort of thing is that guys like Bennett give the entire sport of MMA a black eye. With so many positive developments, such as the approval of MMA in Massachusetts, Brock Lesnar’s return and the sport on the verge of the mainstream, naysayers will continue to point to people like Bennett as the reason that MMA will never take off.

Brock Lesnar has been hospitalized with a major illness.

Lesnar is a fascinating topic for this blog because his athletic career has run the gamut from WWE to the NFL to UFC. His endorsement prowess is something we were going to cover in a future blog pose. Now it looks like he is facing some major health problems:

UFC President Dana White has commented on the situation by saying "He's in a hospital up in North Dakota somewhere right now," said White. "He doesn't want to talk about it publicly, but he's in bad shape."

Here's hoping that Lesnar recovers quickly so that he can continue to blaze trails in the UFC world (not to mention defend his title).