It’s difficult to forget the scene Nate Quarry described outside a federal courthouse in Las Vegas. A federal judge ultimately approved a $375 million antitrust settlement between the UFC and more than a thousand of its former fighters after twelve years—twelve years—of depositions, appeals, setbacks, and a near-collapse of the entire case just a year earlier. Quarry reported that the room burst into cheers and embraces. As he described it, he acknowledged that he was still on the verge of tears.
Veteran fighters cuddling in a courtroom hallway conveys a message that the court documents are unable to fully convey. Wall Street executives were not suing over terms of contracts. These were athletes who had to work second jobs to pay their bills despite being punched in the face for a living.
The main contention of the 2014 lawsuit, Le v. Zuffa, was that the UFC employed anticompetitive business practices to ensnare fighters in low-paying contracts with no real way out. The fighters said they had nowhere else to go because there was no other league with a similar reach, no negotiating power, and no way to leave. The settlement will now be divided among a class of about 1,100 fighters who participated in UFC fights between 2010 and 2017, with average payouts estimated to be around $250,000 after legal fees. It is anticipated that 35 fighters will earn $1 million.
One of the individuals at the center of this case was Gray Maynard. During a period of his career when the UFC’s earnings were reaching the hundreds of millions, Maynard, a two-time UFC title contender and the type of fighter whose name filled arenas, was signed to a $42,000-per-fight contract. He worked in construction to make ends meet. Not as a pastime. as a need for money. He recounts a memorable tale: in 2013, after spending the morning renovating a client’s home, he engaged in a pay-per-view bout with Nate Diaz that same evening. “I was trying to look for other ways to make money,” he replied. It’s the kind of detail that alters your perception of a UFC broadcast.
When U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware rejected an earlier $335 million settlement in 2024, the case almost fell apart. Boulware was worried that the settlement was insufficient and that it would have also ended a different ongoing antitrust lawsuit against the company. The second case, Johnson v. Zuffa, is still pending and pertains to fighters who competed starting in 2017. Johnson’s goal is to force the UFC to alter its future treatment of its athletes, whereas Le’s main concern was back pay for former fighters. It is presently undergoing discovery in the same court and before the same judge.
Maynard anticipates receiving between $400,000 and $500,000 as his personal payout. The money was what he referred to as “icing on the cake.” He appears to be more interested in what comes next, whether the Johnson case necessitates real structural change as opposed to merely writing a check and turning a page.
Whether the UFC’s business practices will significantly change in ten years is still up in the air. In a statement, the organization called the resolution “welcome news” and urged fighters to get their just compensation. That’s a very different stance from ten years ago, but it’s also difficult to determine how much of it represents real reckoning and how much is just rhetoric when a judge renders a final decision and there’s nothing left to dispute.
What is evident is that this settlement truly sets a precedent for professional sports leagues’ views on athlete compensation and market control, not only for mixed martial arts. Before the case reached its courtroom moment on Thursday, many of the fighters who came forward in 2014 watched it almost die for years.
“There are a lot of stories out there,” Maynard stated. The next case will determine whether those stories are heard and whether anything changes as a result.
