The 2017 UFC fighter summit did not go without its controversy. UFC lightweight Kajan Johnson was removed from a Reebok presentation during the athlete retreat after speaking out against the recent Reebok sponsorship deal.
Now, it would appear that an impromptu meeting was declared following the incident. The UFC messaged UFC fighters through an app designed specifically for the summit. The message declared that there would be a meeting “to continue the discussion on our athlete outfitting policy”
In an interview with MMA Junkie, Johnson explained “I didn’t know if I was going to walk into a room with (UFC President) Dana (White) and (UFC co-owner) Ari (Emanuel) and (UFC COO) Lawrence (Epstein) and them be like, ‘Yeah, here’s your pink slip – you’re fired,’ I was pretty scared.”
The meeting was hosted by UFC’s senior vice president of global consumer products, Tracey Bleczinski. Bleczinski asked fighters to stop publicly attacking the Reebok corporation and to direct their efforts to the UFC. However, the fighters revealed that publicly criticizing the UFC could end poorly for them.
Sara McMann said, “I said, ‘We can’t very well do that because we could get fired,’ ‘Reebok can’t fire us. If they’re getting the backlash for that, we’re not as scared about them.’”
