After Rory MacDonald Bombshell, Is MMA's Free-Agent Market About to Heat Up?

It’s hard to imagine Rory MacDonald fighting anywhere but the Octagon.

The British Columbia native has long been regarded as the heir apparent to Georges St-Pierre and the likeliest man to re-energize the UFC’s once-formidable Canadian fanbase.

During a five-year career on MMA’s biggest stage, he’s always come off like—dare we say it—a company man while perennially hovering around the top of the welterweight rankings.

If anybody seemed like he was destined to be a UFC lifer, it was MacDonald, so it was eye-opening on Monday when he appeared on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani and announced that he’s about to hit the open market as a free agent.

“I want to make the most money I can. I want to get paid for what I bring to the table," MacDonald said, via MMA Fighting’s Shaun Al-Shatti. "I've sacrificed a lot to get to the top … I did a lot of favors, I felt like, for the UFC and I don't think it got returned. So now it's all about making money, and whoever wants to pay me the most is where I'll go."

MacDonald is set to face Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson in a potential 170-pound No. 1 contender bout on June 18. If it turns out to be his last fight in the UFC, he’ll join other recognizable fighters like Matt Mitrione, Phil Davis and Ben Henderson who’ve recently left the organization for greener financial pastures.

And MacDonald’s potential free agency seems like the biggest one yet. It would be unprecedented for the UFC to let go of someone of his caliber and relative youth.

Still just 26 years old, MacDonald fought for the welterweight title less than a year ago. Since turning pro in 2005, he’s amassed an 18-3 overall record, and his career losses are nothing to sneeze at—two to current champion Robbie Lawler and one to former interim champ Carlos Condit.

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MacDonald’s best fighting days are still ahead of him, and whichever organization lands his services will be very lucky indeed. In other words, he stands to be the highest-profile, highest-upside fighter to hit sales shelves so far.

That, in turn, means he should be able to command the biggest price yet.

So, it’ll be kind of a big deal if it actually happens—especially if he ultimately jumps ship, to Bellator MMA or anywhere else.

As the undercurrent of free agency begins to trickle slowly across the MMA landscape, MacDonald’s move is also enough to make you wonder if we’re headed for a flood.

His announcement, after all, comes amid a scatter of other declarations that fighters far and wide are ready to get their free-market capitalism on.

World Series of Fighting champions Justin Gaethje and Marlon Moraes independently said this week they’ll do it when their contracts run out. Mitrione’s move from the UFC to Bellator was confirmed on Monday. Prior to that, it was Bellator lightweight champ Will Brooks saying he might not be long for the Viacom cage.

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Veteran fighters like Josh Thomson, Wanderlei Silva and Josh Koscheck have crossed the aisle from the UFC to Bellator as well in recent times.

Bloody Elbow's Anton Tabuena reported that Korea's Road FC was set to make a good financial offer to Henderson (though he too wound up in Bellator), and Ben Askren says he's happy and well taken care of in ONE Championship.

All of it indicates a growing trend and maybe the rise of an important new era in MMA history.

While the sport may never get its own Curt Flood moment, widespread free agency certainly has the potential to change the fabric of MMA more than any in-the-cage rule change or weight class alteration.

For years, the industry has essentially been a single-horse race. Top fighters interested in earning anything close to a living wage didn’t enjoy many options aside from the UFC. Today, that’s changing ever slightly. Not since the fall of Pride FC a decade ago have there been so many potentially lucrative places for athletes to ply their trades.

The recent emergence of Bellator as a player in the free-agent marketplace has changed the game for in-demand talent.

Along with the existence of other domestic organizations like WSOF and Invicta FC, as well new overseas options such as ONE Championship and Rizin, there has perhaps never been a better time to be an independent-minded MMA fighter.

These expanded options—and perhaps some not-so-fighter-friendly changes inside the UFC of late—have allowed fighters and managers to begin turning down standard contract extensions in order to better gauge their actual worth.

Historically, it has been common UFC practice to ink new deals with fighters it wanted to keep before their old deals even ran out.

These days, however, the smart move is to hold out and see which, if any, additional suitors come calling.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the highest-profile cases thus far also appear to involve some perceived disrespect between fighters and their fight company bosses.

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Take both MacDonald and Mitrione for example.

MacDonald has been out of action since his loss to Lawler last July at UFC 189. Their bout was a bloody, Fight of the Year-quality brawl, but MacDonald told Helwani this week that the long layoff wasn’t the result of lingering injuries or any desire to sit and wait for a rematch.

It was due to a "lengthy—and ultimately failed—negotiation period with the UFC," Al-Shatti wrote.

MacDonald said he came out of the grueling and unsuccessful experience of fighting for the welterweight title with a slightly shuffled list of priorities:

"

The experience itself, the fight was great. I loved it. It was a great thing for me and my martial arts career. But, you know, a performance like that and everything I did leading up to it in my career with the UFC, I feel like I should be left a little bit more financially stable

...

So I just have to really fight for what is right on the business side now.

"

Han Myung-Gu / Zuffa LLC/Getty Images

Meanwhile, Mitrione’s entire six-year, 14-fight career had been contested inside the Octagon prior to his recent signing with Bellator. He’d been publicly critical of the UFC’s new exclusive outfitting deal with Reebok, and that tension may have come to a head in January, when he wore the wrong shoes to a UFC media day and was forced to conduct his interviews barefoot.

For his part, Mitrione said he didn’t think those squabbles played a role in the UFC opting not to match the offer made to him by Bellator.

His new deal includes four fights, each with a six-figure payday, he told Helwani during his own appearance on The MMA Hour (h/t MMA Fighting's Marc Raimondi). In addition, he’ll be free to pursue third-party sponsorships and will serve as on-air color commentator when Bellator debuts its new kickboxing series on April 16.

Mitrione discussed his decision during that interview:

"

I was really interested in the options that Bellator was offering and I was really interested in the conversation they were willing to have. I think that they're making the right moves. I think sometimes you get into a spot where the things you fall in love [with] about one organization don't necessarily seem to be [there] anymore and greener pastures seem to be somewhere else.

"

If there’s anything that could challenge the dominance of the UFC, it’s this notion that top fighters might be better off working somewhere else. Even as the most successful force in the industry, the fight company can’t lose too many Hendersons, MacDonalds and Mitriones before its competitors begin to narrow the gap.

For small entities like WSOF, it goes without saying that losing Gaethje and Moraes could be detrimental.

Even for fighters like Brooks, the UFC likely remains the most attractive destination, so it’s possible that an era of increased free agency might only prove to be beneficial for the industry’s most powerful force.

It should also be noted that simply entering free agency does not necessarily mean a fighter will change homes. Recent UFC holdouts like Alistair Overeem and Aljamain Sterling ultimately returned to the fold after dipping their toes into the market. It’s possible the same will happen for MacDonald.

But there is one inescapable truth about fighters' free agency: Healthy competition over their services will always be a good thing.

Here’s hoping that one day, the sport’s top stars fighting out their contracts and putting themselves on the open market will merely be par for the course.