According to MMA reporter Ariel Helwani, UFC President Dana White’s assertion that competitors must be guaranteed three fights annually is untrue.
Nate Diaz’s UFC status is one of the MMA storylines that has garnered the most attention and discussion. The final bout of his active promotional contract has been scheduled, and it will be the main pay-per-view event against Khamzat Chimaev, an undefeated welterweight. However, that news only came after months of back and forth with the MMA authority.
At one point, Diaz even claimed that the UFC was holding him “hostage,” a charge that White angrily refuted in a press conference following the fight. He used the requirement that the company give each fighter on its roster at least three matches per year as evidence to refute Diaz’s assertion.
“We can’t hold guys hostage. It’s not possible. I owe you three fights a year. If I don’t fight you three times a year, I have to pay you. How can I hold him hostage?” White questioned. “I have to get him three fights a year. I offer fights, and he either accepts them or turns them down. Obviously I’m not paying him, so I’ve offered him fights.”
That remark didn’t sit well with Diaz, who proceeded to Twitter to claim that despite asking to fight several opponents during that time, he hadn’t received a single bout offer in the previous nine months.
Helwani has now examined White’s claim and determined it to be complete “hogwash.”
The Canadian journalist claimed that the assertion that the UFC must provide a specified amount of fights within a specific timeframe is untrue during a recent Q&A on The MMA Hour.
“This whole thing, ‘We have to offer him three fights, it’s all hogwash. It’s all hogwash,” Helwani said. “They give you X amount of fights for X amount of time. So it doesn’t say explicitly, ‘We have to do this,’ or ‘We have to do that.’ These contracts are very much weighted in their favor, very much. Over time, a little bit less, a little bit less, (but) still, to this day, very much.”
Helwani denied the claim that the company had ever paid fighters who failed to meet the purported “three fights a year clause.”
“There’s not a single fighter on the roster that I know of — and please present yourself if I’m wrong here — who didn’t get offered three fights and they got paid as a result,” Helwani said. “Unless that is explicitly stated in your specific contract, that’s not a real thing. It’s (for example), ‘I’m going to sign a six-year deal and it’s gonna be a two-year term’ or something like that. Well, that equals out, six divided by two is three. It’s not a real thing, especially not for a guy with one fight left.”
Combatants Back Helwani’s Claim
Helwani most definitely has the support of several fighters in his statements.
Francis Ngannou, the current UFC heavyweight champion, reacted to Diaz’s allegation that he had not had a bout offer in nine months by claiming that he had received six fight offers in the two years before his knee injury.
“The past 2 years before my injury I didn’t get my 6 fights though.”
After leaving the Dana White-led organisation in 2019, Cris Cyborg, the current Bellator Women’s Featherweight Champion and former UFC champion, were inspired to express a similar perspective.
In response to “The Predator,” the Brazilian said that she too didn’t get the three fights the UFC was supposed to provide for its competitors while she was in the Octagon.
“I never got more than 2 fights a year in the UFC”
