Judge grants final approval of $375 million UFC antitrust settlement after decadelong battle

(CN) — A decadelong legal fight for lost wages between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and its former athletes reached the final horn on Thursday after a federal judge gave final approval of a $375 million antitrust settlement.

More than 10 years after a group of ex-UFC fighters filed their class action, Le v. Zuffa, in 2014 to recover lost wages — saying the UFC used anticompetitive business practices to keep its talent locked into low-paying contracts — a class of 1100 fighters will now be eligible to split the $375 million pot after U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware gave final approval at a federal courthouse in Las Vegas.

“It feels like we’ve been in a long fight camp for 12 years,” Nate Quarry, a named plaintiff who fought in the UFC from 2005 to 2010, told Courthouse News on Thursday. “We got knocked down a few times and yet somehow at the end, our hand is being raised.”

Quarry was one of dozens of fighters in the Las Vegas courtroom when Boulware, a Barack Obama appointee, put to rest the lengthy piece of litigation. He said that the room erupted in applause and “hugs all around” when the judge gave his final approval.

“I’m still on the verge of tears right now thinking about how difficult this has been,” Quarry said. “With all the obstacles we overcame, the friendships and relationships that we’ve built along the way, it’s just overwhelming.”

Class members covered in the settlement include fighters who competed in UFC bouts between 2010 and 2017. According to court filings, the class members will receive $250,000 each, on average after fees, with the amount to fluctuate based on number of bouts and other factors.

Thirty-five class members are expected to net more than $1 million, while around 100 fighters should receive more than $500,000. More than 200 fighters should net more than $250,000, over 500 would get more than $100,000 and nearly 800 would recover over $50,000.

The fighters’ attorney Eric Cramer, an antitrust lawyer for class action firm Berger Montague, told Courthouse News on Thursday that he was “extremely pleased” that the court approved the long-awaited settlement.

“The plaintiffs and lawyers are thankful that Judge Boulware presided over this case with an unusual degree of thoughtfulness and care,” Cramer said. “And we couldn’t be prouder to have represented the brave group of athletes who stepped forward on behalf of the class, namely, Cung Le, Jon Fitch, Brandon Vera, Luis Javier Vasquez, Kyle Kingsbury and Nate Quarry. This precedent setting result brings to a close a ten year legal battle for economic justice for these athletes. We will be working hard over the coming weeks to ensure that every single fighter in the class makes a claim and gets the money that is rightfully theirs.”

The fighters will need to be proactive about collecting their cash. Cramer said that his firm will send out claim forms 60 days after the court issues the written order granting final approval. After that, fighters will have a 45-day deadline to sign and return the forms to claim their earnings.

Attorneys for the UFC are urging the fighters to collect what they are owed.

“Today’s decision is welcome news for both parties. We are pleased the Le case is now fully resolved,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

As Quarry said, the settlement didn’t come without its obstacles. Last year, it appeared as if the case was headed to trial after Boulware denied a $335 million settlement agreement between the parties. The judge said he feared the dollar amount wasn’t high enough for the fighters, and worried that the agreement — which also would have settled another pending antitrust case against the UFC, in addition to Le — left no room for injunctive relief.

A month later, the parties reached the new settlement worth $375 million, to which Boulware gave preliminary approval.

The new settlement isn’t just a higher dollar amount, it also leaves the other antitrust case — Johnson v. Zuffa — intact for further litigation. Currently in the discovery process, that class action covers fighters who competed in the UFC from 2017 on.

While the goal with Le was back pay for former fighters, the goal with Johnson is to force the UFC to change its business practices for future ones.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” former UFC fighter Gray Maynard told Courthouse News on Thursday, in reference to the Johnson case.

Maynard, a two-time UFC title contender, told Courthouse News last year that despite his success in the organization, he was locked into a predatory $42,000-per-fight contract that forced him to take up a second job working construction while training full-time.

Sometimes, he’d go straight from the job site to the cage, like in 2013, when he went from working on a client’s house in the morning to fighting Nate Diaz on pay-per-view later that night.

“We were remodeling a house,” Maynard said. “I was trying to look for other ways to make money. After my first title fight, I knew this wasn’t a sustainable career.”

Now that Le is settled, Maynard guesses that his total payout will be in the neighborhood of $400,000 to $500,000. The money is nice, he said, but he’s also thrilled that the Johnson case is still alive so fighters like him can continue to share their stories with hopes of changing the sport for the better.

“The money is icing on the cake,” Maynard said. “There are a lot of stories out there. Hopefully this gives a lot of people confidence and opens people’s eyes as to what’s going on with the UFC and where it needs to go.”

The Johnson case is currently pending before the same judge in the same court. Cramer and his firm are representing the fighters in that action, too.

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