Jon Fitch Cut From His UFC Contract

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“I had two fights left on my contract, but they always put a clause in the contract that if you lose a fight, they’re able to release you at any time after a loss,” Fitch told “Sports Rage” host Garbriel Morency. “That’s pretty standard with any organization, but it’s pretty incredible that they’d go to those lengths for something like this, over a video game.”

The UFC and Dana White have always had a tight control on their fighters which is starting to have drastic effects on the company. Despite record profits, the organization continues to underpay their fighters as the organization wants to control every aspect of the fighter lives outside the octagon.

The UFC wants to leverage their monopoly to even further bleed out and under value fighter’s salaries. The latest move by the UFC has been to cut former #1 welterweight contender Jon Fitch from his UFC contract even with 2 fights left on his deal.

Jon Fitch was let go from his UFC contract because he refused to sign an agreement that would have relinquished his likeness rights for the upcoming UFC video game by THQ. Fitch was quoted as saying “The video game agreement that they have that they wanted us to sign was basically we don‘t get anything for it”.

Even adding more fuel to the fire, Dana White said the UFC would no longer do business with the American Kickboxing Academy, which means MMA fighters like Paul Buentello, Josh Koscheck, Cung Le, Trevor Prangley, Daniel Puder, Mike Swick, Josh Thomson, and rising heavyweight Cain Velasquez might be cut from their UFC contract or not sought after at all.

The UFC is starting to run a totalitarian style organization which has raised the company profile to new heights but their tactics might start back firing. There is little doubt the UFC is the best biggest organization in the world but they do not have some of the best fighters. They have failed to sign the best fighter in the world in Fedor Emelianenko and have had disputes over top level fighter like Matt Lindland, Josh Barrett, Titio Ortiz and Randy Couture. The Fedor deal was apparently called off because Fedor wanted to fight in sambo competitions but the UFC did not want him to.

Already the heavyweight and middleweight divisions are nowhere near as competitive as they should be. For instance, look at the middleweight division which has nobody to even fight the current champion. Where are Matt Lindland, Robbie Lawler, Gegard Mousasi, Chael Sonnen, Siyar Bahadurzada, Paulo Filho, Yoshihiro Akiyama, and Kazuo Misaki?

Unless you become a peon for the company you will be cut from the organization because there is no threat of fighting elsewhere. The UFC can bully and push around anyone they want and not pay fighter for what they are worth. Just look at the UFC headline fight between Keith Jardine versus Chuck Liddell at UFC 76 Knockout. Keith Jardine got paid a paltry $14,000 to headline and fight Chuck Liddell who made on that fight $500,000. In fact the entire pay roll of the UFC 76 event was a total disclosed payroll of $954,000 and more than 50% of that went to one fighter. With bonuses the total publicly announced pay outs to fighters is $1,074,000. With all the merchandising, pay per views buys and ticket sales the UFC made over 100 million for that event alone.

Pulling stunts like this is unacceptable. The UFC is setting the stage for a complete monopoly on all the top fighters' images with these new merchandise agreements, and if anyone except a top guy (GSP, Couture) steps out of line, they lose their job over it. As a mixed martial arts fan, they should be livid at how they treat their talent that pour endless hours in to the gym just to compete while the fat cats in the office make off like bandits.

Unless a rival organization or a union is formed, the UFC will continually bully fighters into submission.

We have said it before one of our articles Hey Dana White please pay the fighters.

To read previous stories on the UFC and lack of respect for their fighters see article below

UFC Salary Controversy

UFC Pay Scale, UFC Fighter Salaries

To read our previous rants on the cheapskates of the UFC go one of our blog posts.

http://www.fighting-mma.com/ufc-betting-information/ufc-news/ufc-91-fighter-pay-salaries/

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