Plaintiffs in antitrust case against UFC invite current and former fighters to information session

Any current or former UFC fighters wondering about how the ongoing class-action antitrust lawsuit is going and how it might affect them will now be able to get some answers — directly.

The plaintiffs and the attorneys of the plaintiffs are inviting current and former UFC fighters to an information session. The meeting will be held Dec. 5 at 1 p.m. PT at the law offices of Wolf, Rifkin, Shapiro, Schulman & Rabkin, LLP in Las Vegas to “provide updates on the status of the lawsuit,” per a press release sent out Tuesday.

The current and former fighters invited must be part of the proposed class — any fighters who competed in the UFC or “had their identity rights used or taken by the UFC” after Dec. 16, 2010.

The lawsuit was first filed by a group of fighters in December 2014. It alleges that the UFC violated antitrust laws “through a scheme to dominate the alleged market for promotion of mixed martial arts.” The suit states that this scheme allowed the UFC to pay fighters less than their market value, compared to what free and fair competition would have produced. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages from Zuffa for all members of that proposed class, i.e., any fighters who have fought for the UFC or had the UFC use their identity rights since December 2010.

“Plaintiffs claim that by allegedly locking up the vast majority of top fighters in each weight class and buying out its biggest potential rivals, the UFC’s scheme has prevented potential competitors from obtaining the critical mass of top fighters necessary to compete with the UFC, thereby allegedly making all other MMA promotions ‘minor leagues,’” the release stated.

The named plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Cung Le, Nate Quarry, Jon Fitch, Brandon Vera, Javier Vazquez and Kyle Kingsbury.