Nate Quarry breaks down the significant update in the antitrust lawsuit against the UFC.
Plaintiffs opposing the UFC had a significant day in court after Judge Richard Boulware of United States Court District Court in Nevada granted them class certification on Thursday. Former UFC middleweight title contender Nate Quarry sat down with Luke Thomas to discuss the class certification decision in Nevada on Thursday.
"Basically what we said was that the UFC had been suppressing our wages across the board, to everyone, for many years, and we all generally have the same story," Quarry explained. "The UFC even has tiers of wages that they would pay to people, so there was really no free market, no bargaining power once you signed with the UFC. And because as we say in our suit, the UFC monopolized the sport. In their worst year during times of our lawsuit, they were making 94 cents out of every dollar worldwide spent on MMA. In the good years, 97 percent of every dollar made. It became such a controlling aspect."
Quarry then pivoted to an apt comparison to the Facebook lawsuit that was announced last week.
"What a lot of people don't understand, is that while there are other organizations, it's very similar to Facebook where 46 states and the federal government are saying Facebook has an illegal monopoly over social media," he asserted. "Well, you can start a website, you can invite your friends onto it, how well is that going to compete with someone who has billions of subscribers. The UFC has such a strong grip on the marketplace that it made competition next to impossible."
"So we're alleging all these things, that essentially has been treated the same from the bottom to the top, the wages have been suppressed and Judge Boulware agreed with us, and said you can sue as one entity," Quarry concluded. "And that's huge, that gives us so much teeth moving forward in our lawsuit."
This lawsuit has the potential to be the most is significant event regarding fighters' rights in MMA history.
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