Jason J. Cruz - Mixed Martial Arts and the Law

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-3728-0

2020 Jason J. Cruz. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover images 2020 Shutterstock

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
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In October 2010, Dana White, the modern-day architect of the UFC, and arguably mixed martial arts, addressed the Oxford Union Society about his upstart company. The Oxford Union has a tradition of hosting some of the worlds most prominent figures, including U.S. Presidents, British Prime Ministers and Mother Theresa. And, here was a street-smart Boston native selling the gathered audience of well-educated people on this new sport of people fighting in a cage. Fighting is in our DNA, he told the gathered audience about his sport. White has used this talking point when selling combat sports from the beginning. Deconstructing the message, White tells us that despite the common perception that humans avoid conflict, it is instinctive in each one of us. It needs no translation and knows no culture, race or ethnicity. And, whether we know it or not, we are drawn to fighting.

Perhaps Whites selling point is true. As early as five years old I recall sneaking into the living room after my bedtime to see what my father was watching. It was boxing. Ray Boom Boom Mancini, Alexis Arguello, Thomas the Hitman Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard are just a few of the names I recall watching with my dad, who begrudgingly allowed me to stay up with him.

As a child, we were always taught never to fight. And, quite frankly, I think this is a good way to approach life. Resolving issues through physical conflict usually does not provide anyone with a better spot than where they started. Yet, throughout my childhood combat sports were always a certain niche interest for me. Watching two combatants hitting each other in a controlled environment had a certain allure. Although it was uncomfortable to watch a boxers face begin to spew blood or puff up due to blows to the head, the technical points of defending oneself while inflicting damage presented a constant draw. And, like a fight, its hard to take your eyes away from it.

Even growing up, I understood what White was conveying. The sport is barbaric and savage but at the same time graceful and beautiful. Those nights past my bedtime were my introduction to combat sports.

Flash forward many decades to a young man living in Orange County, California. In 2002 I came across a documentary, The Smashing Machine, which featured a mixed martial arts fighter, Mark Kerr. It was a sobering look at the sport and Kerr as he tried to carve out a career fighting in Vale Tudo, the UFC and Pride. The documentary was an amazing look at the world of MMA and the ills of the sport, and it got me interested.

Later that year I went to a sports bar in Costa Mesa, California, and decided to pay a $10 cover charge to watch my first UFC show, Ken Shamrock fighting Tito Ortiz. The draw for me was Shamrockan MMA fighter who turned to professional wrestling, then returned to being an MMA fighterstepping in against Ortiz, a bleach-blond Mexican American dubbed The Huntington Beach Bad Boy. The promotion of the fight was reminiscent of a World Wrestling Entertainment feature. While I didnt understand the rules, I was drawn to the unique skills the athletes possessed. In addition to boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu and kickboxing were used. In the end, Ortiz earned the victory over Shamrock, and I was sold on this new sport of mixed martial arts.

I have always wanted to be involved in sports and entertainment law but also enjoyed writing. While my day job in law never yielded a steady sports and entertainment law practice, I found writing about sports was cathartic in that I had the chance to remain involved in some form. In 2011, I answered an opening for a job to write for MMA Payout. The website was dedicated to the business side of the sport of mixed martial arts. With just a handful of sports-related clips at the time, I hoped that Id be able to write about the combat sports world that I became fascinated with as a young boy. Fortunately, the staff at MMA Payout welcomed me. The niche was an interesting dive into the business and legal aspects of sports. From there, I was allowed the freedom to write about legal subjects in mixed martial arts. I took the opportunity and ran with it.

As the sport grew, so did the legal subjects in the industry. Every sport has legal issues but the sport of MMA is unique because of its individuality, business structure and regulation. The characters of the sport also come through in some of the legal filings. Very little has been written about the legal issues in mixed martial arts. Relying on my 20 years of legal experience, court filings and cases, I have written this book as a primer on the legal issues in MMA. Much of the information is evolving, so, while this book attempts to provide the reader with a comprehensive survey of the legal issues of the sport, it is not the last word on the subject.

I want to thank MMA Payout founder Adam Swift for the opportunity to write about the sport of MMA. Swift, also a lawyer, probably thought that a writer with a law degree would be a good fit for the site. I hope its paid off. I also want to thank Jose Mendoza of the site. His retweets of some of my MMA information has helped me gain followers of my work.

Id also like to thank my wife, Carol, and my boys, Jacob and Cooper, for their unwavering support. Finally, thank you to my black lab Ricky, who hung out with me at all hours of the night as I read, wrote and researched for the website and for this book.

Four Billion Dollars.

This is the approximate amount that WME-IMG paid for the Ultimate Fighting Championships in July 2016. It was the most for a sports league as of that date. Just several years prior, the organization was on the brink of bankruptcy. Instead, the company spearheaded by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta with long-time friend Dana White as their mouthpiece did well on a property it purchased for $2 million in 1999.

Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA for short, is a full-contact combat sport that is a combination of amateur wrestling, boxing, jiu jitsu and other martial arts disciplines. The sport of MMA can trace its roots back to ancient Greece with a combat sport known as Pankration. The combat sport of vale tudo, which developed in Brazil, was brought to the United States by the famed Gracie family in 1993. The term Mixed Martial Arts is thought to have been coined by Los Angeles Times columnist Howard Rosenberg. A television reviewer, Rosenberg spent the $14.95 pay-per-view fee to watch UFC 1. Despite the sheer violence that occurred in the Octagon, Rosenberg wrote about the great sportsmanship the fighters displayed towards one another.

The Ultimate Fighting Championships, or UFC for short, was the idea of promoter Rorion Gracie, pay-per-view entrepreneur Bob Meyrowitz and Southern California business executive Art Davie. In its infancy in North America around the time of UFC 1, the sport had few rules and there were questions about how it should be regulated. As told in Davies book,