By Elias Cepeda

This past weekend American fight fans spent Memorial Day weekend in every which way, from solemn observation thought of fallen soldiers to hitting beaches and department store sales with no real thought or reflection. The weekend prior, however, many UFC fighters found themselves at their promotion's headquarters in Las Vegas for a fighter retreat.
 
That weekend produced plenty of controversial headlines, from feuding fighters confronting one another in the street to athletes taking the opportunity to thoughtfully bring up critical issues of fighter pay and benefits to the promotion and to the media. Here at FloCombat, we decided to contact a number of the UFC athletes who attended the fighters' retreat to get their take and reflections on the weekend.
 
Opinions among those UFC athletes we spoke with about the retreat varied wildly. Some fighters reported only positive experiences, while several others had such negative impressions of the retreat and also feared reprisal from the promotion should they publicly express those experiences and views that they chose not to talk on the record with us.
 
Still, other UFC athletes had balanced, mixed reviews of the retreat. We heard from a number of them that while they enjoyed parts of their time there, appreciated the UFC's effort in putting on the retreat and were even glad they attended it, felt that the company and some of the speakers they brought in were out of touch.
 
Other athletes thought the admittedly beautiful and lavish retreat was strange juxtaposed with what they felt are serious issues with the pay and benefit levels UFC fighters -- who are not treated as employees, do not enjoy collective bargaining rights, year-round health insurance, and are not eligible for any pension -- receive.
 
UFC heavyweight and former basketball player Walt Harris seemed to have a wonderful time at the retreat with American Top Team members like Charles Rosa.

"It was a great experience for sure," he said.
 
For Harris, hearing retired NBA star Kobe Bryant speak was the best part of the UFC fighters retreat. "Kobe was the highlight of the weekend," he continued.

Harris didn't know heading into the retreat that he'd get to hear from and speak with Bryant, and was elated when he learned that the future Hall of Famer was there. "It was a surprise," he remembered.
 
"I found out that Kobe was there the day we got there. Somebody said something to me about him because I played ball and I had no idea. They said, 'Check your app,' which the UFC gave us when we gave there for the retreat. Man, I was at his talk an hour early (laughs). When I asked him my questions I referenced that I used to play basketball and afterward I took a photo with him and thanked him and told him how much he influenced me."


Photo Credit: © Joshua Dahl-USA TODAY Sports 

UFC lightweight star and record-holder Joe Lauzon also told FloCombat that he enjoyed hearing Kobe Bryant speak and enjoyed getting to train with other UFC fighters.
 
"Normally for fight week they have one big mat for each locker room. There were three this time. It was one big room and you could see everyone," Lauzon recounted about the training area available to fighters.
 
"Ryan Hall was there and he is like God-level in Jiu-Jitsu. I wanted to roll with him but didn't get to. Fabricio Werdum was hitting pads. I rolled with a bunch of people, like Charles Rosa, Rob Font, Devin Powell, Eric Spicely, and some others. There was also this monster of a dude, this heavyweight who came over to me and asked, 'Do you want to roll?' I was like, 'Uhhh, sure? I guess. I don't know…' (laughs). But I started rolling with him and then he started busting out my best moves.

"Afterward, he tells me, 'I got your DVD.' (laughs) He was trying to hit my stuff on me. I was like, 'get out of here!' (laughs) I try not to roll with too many guys I don't know because I don't trust people but that was a fun experience with all those guys."
 
As for the speakers, like Bryant, brought in to talk to Lauzon and his fellow fighters, the Massachusetts fighter said he made the most of the time he got to hear from them. Some speakers were great, Lauzon said, others were interesting but not relatable to athletes who make as relatively little as UFC fighters do in comparison, and at least one was plain strange.
 
"I liked listening to Kobe Bryant just because of the seriousness of his approach. The Kobe stuff was really good and he got a standing ovation when he came in," Lauzon said.
 
"And I liked the principles of what Kobe said about planning for your future -- he said the money is not going to last you forever, so you have to get into other businesses -- but at the same time, we can't even really compare ourselves to him in that regard. Do you know how much Kobe made during his career? Over $600 million.
 
"Over the course of my UFC career, which is longer than most -- over a decade -- I've probably made $2-3 million, total. And I'm paid really well. I've made much more than most other UFC fighters have."
 
Lauzon said he enjoyed hearing former NFL star Michael Strahan speak but thought a talk given by a representative of UFC sponsor Anheuser-Busch was a bit strange. Other fighters we spoke to, both on the record and on background, in addition to others who made their opinions on that speaker clearly heard through social media and during interviews with other outlets, highlighted that speaker as a particularly tone-deaf and offensive moment of the retreat.
 
More than one UFC athlete said the representative appeared to be intoxicated, and in any case was not helpful at best, and "super douchey" at worst, in telling the fighters that his brand only wanted winners and that if they wanted to get an endorsement they should, "go and be Conor McGregor," according to one fighter we spoke to.

While no one can argue that being Conor McGregor is a lucrative enterprise, right now, the mandate to simply somehow become him did not come across as particularly precise or helpful to many fighters we heard from.
 
The entrepreneur Lauzon did say he was appreciative of the speakers the UFC offered, overall, and in particular enjoyed businessman Robert Herjavec's talk so much that he took several pages of notes on it. In fact, Lauzon took notes on just about all the speakers and sent FloCombat photos of many of those pages.

"I feel like many of the fighters didn't take advantage of all of the speakers," Lauzon said. "Some of them were hard to relate to, but others, like the [Herjavec] talk on financial management were phenomenal. For most of the speakers, I took one page of notes. From his talk, I think I took three."


Photo Credit: © Sean Porkorny-USA TODAY Sports 

UFC contender Dustin Poirier was also at the retreat and enjoyed a lot of the programming.

"It was pretty interesting because of the people they brought in," he said. "Kobe is a legend. He's a hard worker, has a tireless work ethic."
 
Poirier said he didn't much partake in all the evening festivities on the Marriot grounds the fighters stayed at. "A lot of people were going out. Saturday they had a carnival at night set up for us, with free bars and stuff, but that night I went in early," he continued.
 
Fighters like Al Iaquinta criticized the extravagance of the retreat and said that they would rather the money spent on it have gone directly to the fighters in some form or another. Poirier had no complaints about the retreat in his conversation with FloCombat but wouldn't have said "no" to more money.
 
"If that would have been an option, I'm always in favor of more money going to the fighters," he reasoned.
 
Lauzon also wouldn't ever mind more money going to his family but says it is a bit confused thinking to mix up the expenses of the retreat with fighter compensation.
 
"I'm sure it didn't cost a ton of money to have Snoop perform, or bring the speakers in that they did. [UFC president] Dana White seems to be friends with him, and I think [UFC owners] WME-IMG represents a lot of if not all of the speakers they brought in," Lauzon explained.
 
"But even if the retreat did cost a lot of money, even if it cost, say, $400,000, or $450,000 to put on, there's like 450 of us on the roster. If they hadn't done the retreat and just given us all cash or something, that would be about $1,000 per person. That's good, sure, but you really can't compare the two. It was a drop in the bucket. They gave us some really nice speakers, that are probably like $150-$200 and some other stuff, and they flew us all out, sure. Do they have to spend all that money? Maybe not. Could they have done some things differently? Yeah, but I thought it was all good stuff. Overall, I thought it was very good."


Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports 

UFC welterweight Matt Brown told FloCombat he believes choosing between nice weekend retreats and improved pay and benefits for athletes is a false choice.

"WME-IMG represents Kobe and Stahan and Snoop, so I assume they're not spending a ton to get them there. I'm sure they can work out deals. But even if everything cost full-price, there is probably still enough money to go around for all parties," he said. "It's been the same story for fighters for years. The sport grows and we hope it rolls down to fighters in some fashion."
 
As for the entertainment, Brown had to miss a music festival back home in Ohio to attend the retreat and wasn't super keen on missing some of his hard rock favorites and instead of being stuck with Snoop Dogg's SoCal rap-funk, but still managed to enjoy seeing the rap icon in person for a few minutes.
 
"I missed seeing 30-40 bands back in Columbus, Ohio for it, and that's the type of music I prefer for live concerts. But I like hip-hop and I respect Snoop Dogg and his career. He's a good artist," he said.
 
Brown may have never on his own chose to go to such a retreat, though he understands why some fighters may have gotten a real kick out of it all. "I didn't really have a lot of interest in turning my mind off and doing a fun weekend or what have you, but I think it was a good experience for a lot of fighters, I'm sure -- the more optimistic fighters. I've got to think there is probably enough money for both fighters to get more money and to have cool events like this."
 
In all, Brown said he thought that the UFC's new owners, WME-IMG "did a good job." Of course, the UFC had held fighter summits in the past, but Brown said some of those "felt like you were in school," but that this time around, the UFC's new owners "did a good job of not making it like that. WME-IMG clearly has put on these types of events before and did a good job of it. It is definitely a big, corporate event."
 
Any fans familiar with Brown can probably guess that he isn't exactly a person whose personality screams "big corporate," but to the fighter, what's fair is fair. The retreat and its type of showy, corporate shine job may not be his own personal first choice of how to spend a weekend, but he had to admit the UFC did a good job executing what they set out to do with this last one.
 
Poirier echoed how he came away with a sense of just how big the UFC's new Hollywood owners' enterprise is. "The only real sense I got from them is how wide their reach is, how big they are," he said.
 
"I feel like when stars are made through fighting, they will probably be able to transfer over to entertainment if that is something they want to do."
 
Something a number of fighters at the retreat evidently wanted to do was discuss their pay, compensation, and current lack of collective bargaining rights. Unlike players in, say, the NBA, where UFC fighters retreat speaker Kobe Bryant made his mark on the world, UFC athletes are not represented by any association or union.
 
So, they had no collective seat at the table for negotiations of exclusive licensing deals like the UFC's one with Reebok nor a structured piece of the revenue from other exclusive UFC deals like their ones with Harley Davidson or Monster energy drink.
 
UFC athletes also are not eligible for pensions and reportedly get paid far less, collectively, as a percentage of the UFC's revenue than athletes in other major sports leagues like the MLB, NBA, and NFL where athlete associations and unions negotiated terms, do from their teams.
 
UFC bantamweight Leslie Smith asked Bryant during his Q&A period, "how essential to your personal negotiations and the success of basketball in the world do you believe a players association has been…Some of us are on the fence about how much do we pay in, or worried about rocking the boat. How significant to you and your career, and basketball in the world, do you feel like the unity of the players represented by the association has been?"

[tweet url="https://twitter.com/AngieOverkill/status/866821513416032256" hide_media="0" hide_thread="1"]
 

Personal Photo From Joe Lauzon 


Bryant answered that his being in a union was a major part of his even having the chance to earn the approximately $680 million as an individual that he did over the course of his career. The retired player said that being a part of a union is "extremely important" for professional athletes.
 
"Even us as players, where we have our union meetings and things of that nature, we're normally at each other's throats competing against each other. But we understand completely that a rising tide raises all boats.
 
"When you guys have this unity and you guys are operating together on the same page together, it does nothing but simply fortify the sport, make the sport better. Not just for the present, but for future generations that are coming. So, it's extremely important."
 
UFC lightweight Kajan Johnson rose to speak and criticize the UFC's Reebok apparel deal during a Reebok representative's talk to UFC athletes at another point of the retreat and was eventually forced out of the room by security. While making an athlete leave a meeting they flew him to was a pretty bad look, and while fighters we spoke to said that UFC officials were upset with Johnson and told them that the promotion feared such criticism would damage their relationship with Reebok, we were also told some real good came out of Johnson speaking up and out.

"When Johnson said what he did it pretty much derailed that whole talk. They cut it early but it also resulted in something really good happening -- the UFC listening to us," Lauzon said.
 
"We got this push notification on our retreat app afterwards saying to come to this room at 6 p.m. Maybe 100 of us showed up, about a third of the group, and Lawrence Epstein from the UFC was there, and Tracy from the UFC who I believe works on the Reebok side of things for the UFC. They told us that most of the issues we were having were with them, not with Reebok, and that the last thing they wanted was everyone pointing their fingers at Reebok, yelling at them for stuff that was their fault."


Personal photo from Joe Lauzon 

Lauzon said that then the fighters in the room were encouraged to share their complaints, ideas, and suggestions regarding the apparel deal with Reebok, directly with the UFC executives. Olympic silver medalist and former UFC title-challenger Sara McMann, we were told, shared an idea for the UFC to assist in searching out additional sponsors for fighters, while Lauzon told us he simply suggested more transparency in the Reebok deal.
 
"I brought up the fact that the Reebok deal is for $70 million over six years, which is 72 months. And the UFC said at the start that all the money from the deal was going to the fighters. So, that's almost a million dollars a month. For the last 22 months, then, there should have been around $22 million in Reebok pay-outs to fighters," he explained.
 
"But, there's actually only been about $12 million in Reebok money paid out. So, there's about $10 million that went somewhere else. I understand and think it is reasonable if some of the money goes somewhere else. I told them that I'm sure part of the deal was clothes, and that they have to pay staff. But, I told them that transparency would go a long way for us as far as [the Reebok deal] goes. Show us where all the money went.
 
"Lawrence Epstein said he agreed with that. In all, at the end, he told us that we had given them five or six things to think about that they hadn't before thought about."
 
Lauzon said that he wished all UFC athletes directed their criticism or suggestions directly and constructively. "Every time I see someone talking shit about Reebok as a sponsor, I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot. For the next four years the Reebok money will be there," he said.
 
"But afterward, Reebok can't get away from us fast enough. They just dumped $70 million into people talking shit about them."
 
For his part, Lauzon had to spend his birthday weekend at the retreat. Despite that less than optimal timing, he's glad he went, in large part because of all the important issues that got discussed at the prompting of fighters. "I'm glad I went out for this one," he concluded.

FloCombat's hottest content, delivered to your inbox

Don't miss breaking news, feature stories, event updates, and more. Sign up for the FloCombat mailing list today.