On second thought: UFC antitrust Judge Richard Boulware smells a rat?
What smells rotten to Judge Boulware about the proposed $335 million dollar settlement?
How many of us get a do-over when it comes to reversing one of your life’s biggest decisions?
The person you marry. The person you divorce, who ends up marrying someone else and has a much happier life while you’re still miserable and single.
A key decision on a surgical procedure.
A job opportunity that you either declined or accepted.
Strained relations with a friend or family member who suddenly dies and you end up regretting not telling that person how much you loved them.
Life is full of regrets.
Rarely do you get a second chance to have a do-over for a life-changing moment.
What price would you pay to see a sneak preview of how your big decision played out in real-time?
As Paul Gift reported on Friday afternoon, US Federal Judge Richard Boulware is attempting a make-good for the Plaintiff attorneys in the UFC antitrust case.
What you’re about to digest is my reading of the tea leaves from what was discussed in Friday’s court hearing in Las Vegas.
Judge Boulware did not rubber stamp the proposed $335 million antitrust settlement between retired fighters and the UFC. He wants to hear back from the parties in a couple of weeks with more information.
Whether you agree (or not) with my impending assessments, consider this a perspective that no one else is saying out loud.
There are things that the parties involved can say and there are things they cannot legally say. Let’s address some of the more uncomfortable issues in this settlement situation.
Eric Cramer, the key point man and public face
The hardcore MMA fans associate Rob Maysey as the attorney most involved with the UFC antitrust case. However, for the general public at-large, the legal face for the fighters has been Eric Cramer.
As this article at The Legal Intelligencer highlights, Mr. Cramer has made a name for himself and his law firm (Berger Montague) when it comes to large antitrust awards.
Mr. Cramer has been featured in multiple major publications discussing the prospects of the UFC antitrust lawsuit going to trial.
At Inside Hook, Mr. Cramer was prominently quoted in their article on the case: "The Battle of the Century: UFC vs. 1,200 of Its Own Fighters":
“As Eric Cramer, chairman of law firm Berger Montague and a lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, told InsideHook, the trial will focus on the issue of damages and liability, and the jury could potentially find the UFC on the hook for $1.6 billion. But because this is a federal antitrust lawsuit, those damages could be tripled to $4.8 billion. After that would come a ruling on injunctive relief, as determined by the judge, where the fighters are seeking changes to how the UFC does business, specifically in athlete contracts that the judge noted in his order “bound fighters for, essentially, their entire professional careers,” despite them being classified as independent contractors.
If the trial proceeds, Cramer is confident he’ll be able to convince a jury of what he sees as the UFC’s many transgressions.
“We’re going be able to put on a trial and point the jury to all of the abundant evidence that the UFC is a monopoly and a monopsony, and that it used its market power to buy out and kill its competition to lock up all the fighters into long-term deals to make it so that they had nowhere else to fight,” he said. “As a result, instead of getting paid 50 or 60% of the revenues, like in most other major sports, or 70% of the revenues, like in boxing, the fighters in the UFC get below 20%.” John Nash, an MMA business reporter, estimated that this share of revenue dropped even lower in 2022, to between 13% and 14.5%.”
When Judge Boulware granted certification to the class of fighters to proceed forward in trial, Mr. Cramer went on Twitter to celebrate the good news:
“Thrilled to announce that the court in the UFC case has certified the class of mma fighters. We look forward to demonstrating our allegations that the UFC has abused its market power to suppress fighter pay before a jury in Las Vegas. The fight for fighter justice continues!”
Seven months later, the news of a proposed settlement in the UFC antitrust case was announced.
Mr. Cramer was the key point man for comment for the Plaintiffs, as highlighted in this MMA Fighting article. He was also quoted in The New York Times.
These are important facts to note because Mr. Cramer set the tone with the public, with his statements, regarding how confident the Plaintiffs were in prevailing at trial.
We went from Mr. Cramer saying he was ready to go trial to him quoted by MMA Fighting as saying that fighters would have an opportunity to “complain” about aspects of the class settlement that was reached.
The long marriage and the three key moments
Nine years. It should have never taken this long. Both the fighters and UFC wanted a quicker timetable. They didn’t get a speedy resolution.
Who knows what was going on behind the scenes with Judge Boulware in regards to why his rulings were delayed… and delayed… and delayed again.
A child who was nine years old when this lawsuit was filed is probably graduating high school right now.
If Judge Boulware had ruled on the important motions in a timely fashion, we would have been talking about this antitrust case going to trial in the middle stages of the Biden Administration rather than at the tail end.
I suspect the judge is regretting this deeply. We’ll address this angle later in the article.
From the time the UFC antitrust lawsuit was filed, three major court decisions impacted the path under which this case would proceed.
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