A lot took place during last month’s UFC Athlete Retreat.
The UFC invited all of their athletes to attend a retreat in Las Vegas. While at the retreat, fighters would attend seminars, see the new UFC facilities, and enjoy some other fun activities.
Among the fun activities planned was a special concert from rap legend Snoop Dogg.
Even though this may have sound fun on paper, the retreat created an intense atmosphere for fighters. Some fighters enjoyed the weekend, while other thought it was a waste of time.
“I feel like many of the fighters didn’t take advantage of all of the speakers,” UFC lightweight Joe Lauzon told FloCombat. “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.”
Eventually, during a talk with a Reebok representative, things became hostile between the fighters and the clothing brand. This resulted in certain fighters getting to speak their minds about the UFC’s exclusive sponsorship deal with Reebok.
“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,” Lauzon said. “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.
“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.
“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.”
While some of the events during the retreat may have been a waste of time, it appears the UFC fighters made their voices heard when it comes to their displeasure with Reebok.
