Could legal battle with Alverez be a loosing situation?

There's something so uniquely sad about seeing a pro fighter dragged into court over contract disputes. It's the same breed of sadness I feel whenever people dress up their cats in people clothes. One look at the spectacle, and you can see how wrong it is, how unhappy it makes everyone involved, how even the best outcome is still sort of a loss.

And yet, unless something changes soon, it looks like former Bellator lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez is headed for just such a court battle. UFC President Dana White warned that the situation was going to "get ugly," and it has. Chances are it will get uglier still before it's all over, and, at least for Bellator, I can't help but wonder whether this isn't one of those situations in which the harder you fight, the deeper you sink.

For those of you just getting caught up, the quick and dirty facts of the case go something like this: Alvarez's recently expired Bellator contract gives his employers the right to match any contract he's offered by a competitor. The UFC offered Alvarez what, by all indications, seems like a pretty sweet deal, and Bellator matched it. Or at least, that's what Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney claims.

According to Rebney, who I spoke with late Monday afternoon, the contract Bellator offered Alvarez is "exactly the same deal with the same figures and the same numbers" as the one offered by the UFC. According to Alvarez, who aired his grievances on Monday's "MMA Hour" with Ariel Helwani, Bellator's matching offer is like a meal at McDonald's compared to the UFC's offer to take him out for lobster.

How can this be? When is a matching offer not a matching offer? The way Rebney told it, Bellator didn't just offer Alvarez a comparable deal, it offered him identical wording on an identical contract.

"As a matter of fact," Rebney told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com), "we didn't just match it, we took the UFC contract, took it out of the PDF format, changed the UFC name to the Bellator name, and put a signature to it."

If Alvarez would have signed it, Rebney added, Bellator would have sent him a check for $250,000 the next day to match the signing bonus the UFC had offered him. It would also have given him $70,000 to show and another $70,000 to win in his first fight, just like the UFC. The trouble is, those aren't the only ways to make money in the UFC, and every fighter knows it.

For one thing, there's the possibility of future pay-per-view cuts. There are also the discretionary bonuses the UFC loves to hand out, extra money the UFC gives away – or so White likes to brag – even when it doesn't have to. But that's all hypothetical, for the purposes of the contract. That's not guaranteed money that Bellator is required to match, which is probably how you end up with one party feeling like it's fulfilled its legal obligations and the other party feeling like he's just been handed a McRib as a substitute for a steak.

As familiar as we all are with narrative of the big, bad, scumbag fight promoter – and as ready as we typically are to side with a fighter who claims that he's being screwed by the guys in suits who are interfering with his ability to feed his family – I'm not sure how well that holds up here. I'm also not sure it matters, at least in the court of public opinion, which is why this is shaping up to be a lose-lose situation for everyone.

Consider it from Bellator's perspective for a second. As Rebney put it: "When we entered into the contract with Eddie, when we handed him the first $100,000 check, we negotiated in a clause that said, hey, when this ends, even though it's years from now, we want to be able to match word for word and dollar for dollar what somebody else gives you. We don't want to be in a position to give you less. We just want to know that after we invest all this time and all this money into you and your career, we can stay in the game if we're willing to give you exactly what somebody else is willing to give you. And that's what we did."

It's tough to argue with that logic. After all, how can Bellator expect to last as an MMA promotion if it's just building future UFC stars with no option to retain their services after it's done the heavy lifting of promoting the guy? And how can you expect Bellator – a company that has not put on a single pay-per-view event yet (though Rebney won't rule it out in the future, he said) – to offer exactly the same deal in both hard numbers and hypothetical ones as a competitor with a different business model?

But then, there's Alvarez on the "MMA Hour," calling in via Skype with his kids' toys visible in the background, explaining precisely how depressing it is to think about spending what might be the best years of his career in a protracted court battle. Even if Bellator has a legit claim to keep him there, how are you not supposed to sympathize with the guy whose window of opportunity may be rapidly closing? And just how great of a victory would it really be for Bellator if Alvarez is eventually forced to accept the matching offer?

That's the thing about contracts. You can make a man adhere to one, but you can't force him to be happy about it. And if Bellator does win, but the perception in the MMA universe is that Alvarez is stuck in a deal he doesn't like all because of the legal maneuvering of a heartless fight promoter, that seems worse than letting him go to the UFC. It gives the UFC fodder for claims that Bellator's contracts are somehow morally wrong for containing the same provisions as its own, and it makes up-and-coming fighters think twice about getting locked down in a deal with Bellator.

The problem is, fight promoters can't afford too much sentimentality, as Rebney was quick to point out.

"Sometimes people forget this is a business," he said. " ... From the very first day we started this company, we've approached it as a business. We've not approached it from an emotional point of view or from a pure fan perspective. We approached it as a business, and I knew going in it was a hyper-competitive business."

In other words, don't cry for Alvarez if the worst thing that happens to him is he has to cash a check for a quarter-of-a-million dollars without the promise of hypothetical points on a hypothetical pay-per-view. It is, after all, the deal he signed.

Asking him to honor it now seems reasonable. It seems justifiable. But in a sport in which good guys and bad guys are determined more by the will of the fans than by the ink on a contract, I'm not sure how much it will help. When it comes to public perception, you can be right and still end up looking wrong.

http://www.mmajunkie.com/news/2013/01/legal-battle-with-eddie-alvarez-could-be-a-lose-lose-for-bellator

Pure Zuffa propaganda. Last year, California Assembly Member Luis Alejo (a former college wrestler, by the way) introduced legislation to extend the Muhammad Ali Act to MMA fighters in that state. In short, it would have granted to MMA fighters what boxers already have.

Guess who in the MMA media supported this bill? And guess who were either purposely silent or opposed to it?

Now this same shill/scab MMA 'media' is pretending to support a fighter, Eddie Alvarez, only because the Fertittas think they can make more profits from his fights. They started their campaign this week with Eddie being on one of the Zuffa shill's shows, and now all these parrot sites are repeating this propaganda.

If you really support fighters' rights, support extending the Ali Act to MMA fighters as a first step. And don't hold your breath for these zombies to do so.

A lot of murky things being said here. Don't exactly believe either promoter. Unfortunate that Eddie can't share the details of the deal. Also, it isn't surprising that BFC matched 75K. I can't believe the UFC expected them not to match, considering what a paltry amount of money that is to retain one of their stars.

nhbnews wrote:Pure Zuffa propaganda. Last year, California Assembly Member Luis Alejo (a former college wrestler, by the way) introduced legislation to extend the Muhammad Ali Act to MMA fighters in that state. In short, it would have granted to MMA fighters what boxers already have.

Guess who in the MMA media supported this bill? And guess who were either purposely silent or opposed to it?

Now this same shill/scab MMA 'media' is pretending to support a fighter, Eddie Alvarez, only because the Fertittas think they can make more profits from his fights. They started their campaign this week with Eddie being on one of the Zuffa shill's shows, and now all these parrot sites are repeating this propaganda.

If you really support fighters' rights, support extending the Ali Act to MMA fighters as a first step. And don't hold your breath for these zombies to do so.

Yup, the propaganda campaign has definitely begun.

nhbnews wrote:Pure Zuffa propaganda. Last year, California Assembly Member Luis Alejo (a former college wrestler, by the way) introduced legislation to extend the Muhammad Ali Act to MMA fighters in that state. In short, it would have granted to MMA fighters what boxers already have.

Guess who in the MMA media supported this bill? And guess who were either purposely silent or opposed to it?

Now this same shill/scab MMA 'media' is pretending to support a fighter, Eddie Alvarez, only because the Fertittas think they can make more profits from his fights. They started their campaign this week with Eddie being on one of the Zuffa shill's shows, and now all these parrot sites are repeating this propaganda.

If you really support fighters' rights, support extending the Ali Act to MMA fighters as a first step. And don't hold your breath for these zombies to do so.

Another garbage article from Ben Fowlkes, why am I not surprised? One of the most pretentious so-called "journalists" out there. The Ali Act needs to be applied as soon as possible, fighters rights are at stake. It's sad there are so many people opposed to it. Do people love the money men THAT much?

Eddie would end up on FOX or something .....then wheres your PPV money then.

Ben Fowlkes is a faggot

stu3ufc wrote:Eddie would end up on FOX or something .....then wheres your PPV money then.

Ben Fowlkes is a faggot

I could tell he wrote this piece just by the overly sentimental drivel in the opening paragraph, and the strange metaphor that doesn't work.

Bellator KO1 UFC. They can't win this case. Fowlkes is a disgrace for this article. Why should anyone sympathize with Eddie, when he could have just waited out the matching period if he wanted the UFC, which seems like the angle Ben is pushing here.

Horrible article. The same zombies who praise Dana for being a businessman are the same ones who are now willing to chide Rebney for being "cutthroat."

To be honest, I can see how this would create a litigation issue.

Basically, Zuffa's argument is that Bellator's match is not really a match because of potential revenue from PPV.

Bellator's argument is that since these are just potential and not written into the contract explicitly, the match is a match.

I'm not a lawyer.

We'll see how it plays out, I guess.

Zuffa doesnt even care about Eddie or if they win. But the fans will never realize that. Zuffa is just trying to create negitive press and bleed Bellator of resources with their pack of lawyers. This is the same company that thought it was a good idea to pass SOPA and try to sue stream watchers. Because if you watched a ufc fight on youtube you obviously stole from them.

Can't see how they can legally match someone's "intentions" or projections. Needs to be more black & white, guaranteed pay.

Saying they 'intend' to give him more sounds like an old Steve Martin joke. This is why the Zuffa shill/clowns report it as if it were the truth.

If Alvarez signs with Zuffa and then doesn't get what he thought he would, Zuffa and their shills could simply quote Steve Martin:

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!" How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don't say "I forgot"? Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, "I forgot armed robbery was illegal."

Steve Martin

nhbnews wrote:Saying they 'intend' to give him more sounds like an old Steve Martin joke. This is why the Zuffa shill/clowns report it as if it were the truth.

If Alvarez signs with Zuffa and then doesn't get what he thought he would, Zuffa and their shills could simply quote Steve Martin:

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!" How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don't say "I forgot"? Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, "I forgot armed robbery was illegal."

Steve Martin

I can't wait for this to go to court and for Bellator to win because Eddie is wrong thinking Bellator needs to match "potential PPV bonus" when UFC could throw him on a fuel tv card.

Bjorn is a lawyer also ...so Eddie is fucked!

nodogoshi wrote:To be honest, I can see how this would create a litigation issue.

Basically, Zuffa's argument is that Bellator's match is not really a match because of potential revenue from PPV.

Bellator's argument is that since these are just potential and not written into the contract explicitly, the match is a match.

I'm not a lawyer.

We'll see how it plays out, I guess.

Bellator should just intend to give Eddie $3 million dollars. This doesnt mean that they actually have to give him $3 million dollars.

Zuffa's clause of non guaranteed money and PPV cut that the INTEND is meaningless. What would make it meaningful if they made a contract the same as Overeem where the numbers, percentage and actual cut is there. Without actual hard facts NO OTHER PROMOTION CAN EVER MATCH Zuffa's fairytale numbers.

monaroCountry wrote:

nodogoshi wrote:To be honest, I can see how this would create a litigation issue.

Basically, Zuffa's argument is that Bellator's match is not really a match because of potential revenue from PPV.

Bellator's argument is that since these are just potential and not written into the contract explicitly, the match is a match.

I'm not a lawyer.

We'll see how it plays out, I guess.

Bellator should just intend to give Eddie $3 million dollars. This doesnt mean that they actually have to give him $3 million dollars.

Zuffa's clause of non guaranteed money and PPV cut that the INTEND is meaningless. What would make it meaningful if they made a contract the same as Overeem where the numbers, percentage and actual cut is there. Without actual hard facts NO OTHER PROMOTION CAN EVER MATCH Zuffa's fairytale numbers.

Yeah no doubt, if the money isn't written in the contract it is bogus.

And your last statement is right.

I was just laying out my understanding based on the info out there. Pretty messed up situation. I generally hate to see litigation between promoter and fighter, but in this case it's pretty hard not to support Bellator. Besides, Zuffa is obviously behind it.

nhbnews wrote:Saying they 'intend' to give him more sounds like an old Steve Martin joke. This is why the Zuffa shill/clowns report it as if it were the truth.

If Alvarez signs with Zuffa and then doesn't get what he thought he would, Zuffa and their shills could simply quote Steve Martin:

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!" How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don't say "I forgot"? Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, "I forgot armed robbery was illegal."

Steve Martin

Haha "Comedy Is Not Pretty". I had that on vinyl and 8 track when it came out in 79'.


Steve Martin: [as Socrates] It was always: "Socrates, what is truth? Socrates, what is the nature of the good? Socrates, what should I order? Socrates, what are you having?" And not once did anyone ever say: "Socrates, hemlock is poison!"

There is a good side to all of this. Competition from Bellator is making the $money$ details of contracts for new fighters they're trying to sign public when there is somebody else with the resources to potentially match them. I'm sure that fighters and their agents/managers are watching this stuff very closely.

The business landscape is changing pretty dramatically for Zuffa with things like this. Bellator now-owned by big money Viacom, Bellator now on the network that MADE the UFC, Fox deal on the slide for Zuffa...

for the fighters, the sport, and us!!!