UFC veteran Randy Couture knows what it’s like to go to war with the world’s biggest MMA promotion. Couture endured several highly publicized legal battles with the UFC back in the day, and has been campaigning ever since against the promotion’s restrictive fighter contracts. For that reason, Couture told MMAFighting that he is “proud” of Francis Ngannou for standing up to the organization amid years of contract disputes.
“The history is there. When [Zuffa] bought the company, I took them to task over their ancillary rights and the crappy contract they were trying to force me to sign as their heavyweight champion. We asked and put some more clauses in there. The upside to that is I got a much better deal moving forward. The downside is they closed a bunch of the loopholes in those crappy contracts and made it more difficult for other fighters moving forward.
Randy Couture “Proud” Of Ngannou For Standing Up to the UFC
I never spoke to Francis directly myself but obviously Eric [Nicksick] is our head coach and our gym manager [at Xtreme Couture] and he was directly responsible for helping Francis shore up his wrestling and training for those fights against Stipe [Miocic] and the other fights he had in the UFC. I talked to Eric a lot about my position and where I stood. I was the only guy chirping back in ’06, ’07. Trying to get a better deal in [2001] when they bought the company. Fighting for my ancillary rights in all that stuff, the video games and all the other stuff that’s tied up in all of that.”
Couture also reiterated a consistent message from Ngannou’s camp: that the UFC was offering huge money, but would refuse to budge on some key concessions, including fighter healthcare.
“The money they threw at Francis was pretty significant and probably as much as anybody’s gotten paid in our sport but it was the other things — health insurance, a fighter’s representative, some of those things that he asked for that were outside of that, that caused them to drop him.
They don’t want to give up that power. They don’t want to give up those things. They want to be able to control the fighters the way they want to control them. They don’t like that transparency. They keep those numbers pretty close to their vest so they don’t have to negotiate with fighters who know what their value is in the market place, that’s how that shakes out.”
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