(CN) — Nate Quarry has been fighting for fairer pay within the Ultimate Fighting Championship for the better part of the last decade. In March, it looked like his fight had finally paid off when a group of former fighters reached a $335 million antitrust settlement with the fight promotion.
That was until last week, when a federal judge axed the agreement and urged the parties to go back to the negotiating table with an October trial date looming if no new settlement is reached.
For Quarry, now 52, the debacle took him right back to his days in the cage.
“As fighters, your opponent gets changed, the date gets changed. You’re fighting, then you’re not fighting,” Quarry told Courthouse News. “You just have to be ready for the fight, whenever, wherever it comes.”
From 2005 to 2010, Quarry was one of the UFC’s top middleweights, boasting an impressive 7-3 record with the organization. Now, he’s one of many former fighters accusing the UFC of monopolistic business practices, which he claims the promotion uses to quell competition and keep fighter pay low.
He’s a named plaintiff in Le v. Zuffa, the first of two ongoing class action antitrust cases against the UFC’s parent company, aimed at recovering lost wages for ex-fighters. The other case, Johnson v. Zuffa, looks to implement changes to the UFC’s business model to make the MMA market more competitive.
March’s settlement would have put an end to both cases. Fighters in the class would have netted an average of $200,000 under the agreement, with payment to fluctuate based on the athletes’ number of bouts and time in the UFC.
The settlement also included a number of changes to the UFC’s business model, including more freedom to fighters during contract negotiations and enhanced name and likeness rights for the athletes.
Those would have been welcome changes for former UFC lightweight Gray Maynard, who fought in the UFC from 2007 to 2018. He told Courthouse News that in 2014, the UFC locked him into a predatory contract to keep him from going to another promotion.
On that contract, he recalled earning just $42,000 per bout — including two high-profile title fights — which only goes so far when having to pay for training, travel, management, recovery and other expenses. At best, fighters like Maynard compete three times per year. But because of injuries and the limited number of opponents for elite fighters like him, once or twice was far more common.
During his UFC stint, Maynard said he worked construction on the side to make ends meet. 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.”
The 45-year-old is part of the Le class. He said he wasn’t sure how much money he would have been entitled to if the settlement had gone through. Based on court documents, it would have been well into the six figures.
But after U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware pulled the agreement last week, fighters like Maynard and Quarry could come out of this yearslong legal battle empty-handed.
Boulware, an Obama-appointed federal judge in Nevada, didn’t immediately provide reasoning for his decision. At previous hearings, he appeared skeptical of the $335 million settlement offer, considering the UFC could be on the hook for billions if these cases go to trial.
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