As UFC Says 'Save the Date,' Fighters Still Not Crazy in Love with Reebok Deal

With about a month left before a rigid new outfitting deal between Reebok and the UFC chases third-party sponsors out of the Octagon, opposing sides in MMA’s ongoing uniform debate no longer even seem to be having the same conversation.

Last week, the fight company announced what it called “a historic unveiling” on June 30 in New York City, where it is believed we’ll get our first look at the actual Reebok gear fighters will be required to wear during future UFC bouts. The announcement was styled as a “save the date” card, as if a wedding is in the offing and we’re all about to embark on a long, happy new marriage.

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Still, the more we hear from fighters, the more we get the feeling this wedding may be one of the shotgun variety.

The latest wave of criticism of the new apparel policy has just now begun to filter down from the UFC’s highest level. Featherweight champion Jose Aldo joined the fray on Monday, telling Brazilian media outlet Combate—translation via Bloody Elbow’s Lucas Rezende—that the new arrangement "is great for the UFC, but not for the fighters."

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"I see a lot of athletes losing too much…," Aldo said. “The UFC brought the sport to where it is today, great, that's their merit. But if athletes were more united and had a union to protect them, I don't think this would happen."

Aldo’s comments came on the heels of former UFC title contender Sara McMann telling MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani that she’d consulted a lawyer about the UFC-Reebok partnership because there "could be a strong case for gender inequity in the way this deal is presented."

Former Strikeforce champion and upcoming UFC 188 co-header Gilbert Melendez added his voice to the chorus this week, too, during an appearance on MMA Junkie Radio. Melendez lamented the loss of the old sponsorship system and painted a fairly bleak picture of what might be to come:

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“I lived off my sponsorship money every day as an up-and-coming fighter. Just my food, my rent—just so I didn’t have to work as hard and I could focus on fighting…I don’t think, without sponsors, I’d be where I’m at today. I would have had to throw in the towel and get a real job, and I think some fighters are going to have to do that.”

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So, that makes for a sobering thought, as we all prepare for the historic gala.

Aldo, McMann and Melendez’s comments are significant because they amount to the harshest indictments of the new policy we've seen from such high-profile sources. Prior to this, the Reebok deal’s most stringent critics have been midcarders like Matt Mitrione, Brendan Schaub and Aljamain Sterling. Main event fighters like Donald Cerrone and Urijah Faber—longtime company men—have seemed more resigned to their fates, despite indicating they’re going to take a financial hit.

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In fact, nearly all of the fighters we’ve heard from since the UFC’s new, tiered sponsor-payment system was revealed have said they stand to lose money. None of them said the UFC solicited their input prior to signing the deal. Some of them—like Melendez—say they think the new policy could have negative effects on young, up-and-coming fighters.

We’ve already seen blue-chip prospect Ed Ruth choose Bellator over a potential career in the UFC, and Ruth cited the Reebok deal as “a big reason” why he signed with the smaller company. Meanwhile, the departure of light heavyweight contender Phil Davis, also to Bellator, and Bellator boss Scott Coker quipping that his “phone has been ringing” simultaneously raises the question of whether other employment opportunities are becoming more attractive to UFC vets, too.

In classic UFC fashion, though, the fight company just ain’t trying to hear it.

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UFC President Dana White has been characteristically steadfast in his defense of the Reebok deal, though his interviews on the subject have thus far also been characteristically lacking in solid evidence. He openly mocked Schaub’s claims that he’d made "six figures" in sponsorships for each of his last six UFC fights, but White couldn’t say for sure whether those figures were accurate.

He also couldn’t do much to convince us that the Reebok deal will actually be better for guys like Schaub.

While appearing on SportsTalk Live with Chick Hernandez prior to UFC 187, White seemed content to chalk the changing outfitting policy up to the natural “evolution of the sport.” At the same time, the UFC president revealed that the $70 million figure that’s been widely quoted as the total value of the Reebok deal also includes the cost of product that will be gifted to UFC fighters.

Product nobody ever asked them if they wanted, remember.

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"It's a good deal. It's not a bad deal...," White told Hernandez. "Every time we change anything here, it's part of the evolution of the sport. You know, everybody goes crazy, it's part of the deal. It's time, it's the right time for this to happen. This sport needs it, and it is what it is. It'll die down."

So there you have it. For the most part, the UFC’s strategy has been to keep reassuring us all that this is a good deal for everyone because, well, they said so. They’re not exactly engaging with any fighter’s complaints directly—though they did release a short statement about McMann’s charges of inequality—and they don’t seem to be presenting any hard and fast evidence that the concerns aren’t justified.

They just keep moving forward, pursuing their own agenda, just as they have done for that company’s entire existence. It’s a strategy that has worked well for the UFC in the past.

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And heck, White may be right about that last part. After all, eventually the fighters who remember what it was like to have third-party sponsors will age out of this sport. New fighters will come in, having no concept of whether they’re getting a great deal or a bad one. It’ll just be the deal they’ve always had.

But it’s also hard not to notice that the dialogue coming from the other side of the aisle has shifted a bit.

Never before have we seen so many UFC fighters publicly voice their displeasure over a single issue. Never before have we heard a standing UFC champion like Aldo tacitly endorse the idea of a fighter’s union. Never before have we heard a main event talent like Melendez openly admit that the next generation of fighters might come out of this worse off than he was.

You can feel a consensus building in a way that it rarely does in this most individual of individual sports. Mitrione, who said he wouldn’t comment any more on the Reebok deal for legal reasons, halfway broke his own vow this week, when he publicly backed Aldo’s comments during an appearance on Helwani’s The MMA Hour.

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"I think he’s right and I think he’s got huge stones to say it,” Mitrione said of Aldo. “He’s the first champion to say it, the first highly paid guy...he’s doing it for the greater good, and it’s not the same ‘greater good’ as the Reebok deal."

For now, though, many of the fighters—even those quoted here—seem to be affording the UFC the benefit of the doubt.

McMann told Helwani that the UFC "probably will do the right thing and contact people and make personal deals."

Melendez sounded somewhat less hopeful, but he still admitted he had "faith that they (UFC ownership) have an ultimate big game plan, and hopefully, this is better for the sport and yada yada yada—all that stuff."

That trust, however, certainly isn’t unlimited. Smart money says it’ll last approximately one more month.

When the Reebok deal kicks in and the checks start getting cut, this conversation must necessarily go on. Then we’ll get a better idea how happy this marriage has a chance to be.