Frank Trigg says the rise in popularity of mixed-martial-arts has affected athlete-promoter relationships.
On Fightful MMA's podcast Trigg brought up Brain Stann saying working with Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino was hard. Trigg said he saw this fitting into something he has seen with other fighters.
"I've been noticing a trend in MMA," said Trigg, "I had dealings with Cyborg when she was younger, when she first came into the sport, very easy to work with. Everyone talked about how easy it was before, working with McGregor. Everyone talked about how easy it was to work with these people before they got big. All of a sudden they got big and now they are hard to deal with. Even Anderson (Silva) is getting a bad rap on being hard to deal with" he continued.
The fighters seem to get worse to "deal with" after they become more popular or in Anderson Silva's case, when the sport received more attention according to Trigg.
"I don't think it's as much the athletes problem, as the issues that happened with UFC. People forget (Silva) was right in the middle of that huge explosion of MMA that got more eyeballs and more people watching," said Trigg. "I think why these bigger named athletes are getting hard to deal with isn't because of attitudes are changing, it's because of so much more crap you have to go through," he added.
Trigg went on to say the contracts contain a lot more obligations for the fighters than in the past. Also during the podcast, Trigg shared stories about Steven Seagal and about when he was ringside for Nick Diaz's victory over Takanori Gomi in 2007.
