UFC Holds Fighter Development Meetings

As the sport of mixed martial arts grows, so does the growing need for the fighters, who are now becoming financially sound and successful full-time athletes, to understand the business side of the industry they work in.

Recently, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the largest organization in MMA, held meetings with many of their fighters and employees to help educate and inform them on many business practices and personal decisions they are now being faced with.

“This thing was long overdue,” said UFC president Dana White about the meetings. “We should have done this a couple of years ago because we've got a lot of growing pains right now.

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They have been doing this in a lot of the American sports leagues, especially with the college players transitioning into the pro game. It seems a good idea, however i get the feeling that Dana would have been impressing the fact that no fighter is bigger than the UFC or Dana himself. Probably going over what drugs/supplements you shouldnt be using, and that will be for the benefit of the sport as a whole.

He has been promising a summit of some description with his fighters since the UFC75 press conference, but methinks a lot of this is a kneejerk reaction to whats happening in the press at the moment.

I cant fault him for trying to legitimise this sport further.

One would hope that this idea was at least at the back of his mind until recently. Sometimes it takes a little shitstorm for people to get their act together. As we've all seen from entourage, the duty of the agent among other things is to keep things from their client. I still have a suspicion that much of the randy couture situation is based on that fact. Over and over, the fighters have said, "i'm just a fighter, what I do is fight, my manager handles all the other stuff". I think its an important step for the ufc to educate the fighters on whats actually going on, even if they want their managers to handle things.