It’s Over! Judge Approves $375M Settlement For UFC Fighters

A judge has signed off on the UFC’s second settlement offer which will result in fighters from 2010-2017 getting one final payday from the promotion.

It took ten years, but a little lawsuit filed by Jon Fitch, Cung Le, and Nate Quarry against the UFC has finally ended with a Nevada judge’s approval of a $375 million settlement towards fighters.

Judge Richard Boulware approved the settlement during a Thursday (Feb. 6, 2025) hearing, which will see lawyers representing the fighters get roughly a third of the cash. That still leaves a lot left over for fighters that competed for the promotion between 2010 to 2017, which is the period covered by this particular lawsuit.

According to the settlement filing, “25 Class members would net over $1 million; nearly 100 fighters would net over $500,000; more than 200 fighters would recover over $250,000; over 500 fighters would net in excess of $100,000; and nearly 800 would recover over $50,000.”

This covers all persons who competed in one or more live professional UFC-promoted MMA bouts taking place or broadcast in the United States between December 16, 2010 and June 30, 2017.

Fighters who qualify can arrange to get their money by filling out a form at UFCClassAction.com.

When this lawsuit was launched back in 2014, few expected the fighters to win a victory of this size. The plaintiffs were alleging that the UFC had used its position as a Monopsony in mixed martial arts to control the market and underpay fighters. If they could convince a jury that was true, trebled damage payouts could have pushed the amount owed to UFC fighters to over $4.5 billion.

But it took 10 years for the case to get assigned, survive numerous attempts to dismiss, go through discovery, and for fighters to get class certified. A trial — originally set by Boulware for mid-February after he refused an initial settlement — might have gone fast, but endless appeals from the UFC would not. Most fighters are considering the $375 million settlement a win.

This doesn’t end the UFC antitrust lawsuit story completely, either.

An initial settlement put before the judge would have wrapped up the lawsuit from Le, Fitch, and Quarry that covered 2010 to 2017, plus another lawsuit from Kajan Johnson covering 2017 to present. The judge refused that settlement on account of it not adequately serving fighters covered under the Johnson case. Most of them had signed arbitration waivers that exclude them from collecting settlement money, meaning they’d get barely anything from the settlement.

So now this approved settlement covers just the 2010 to 2017 fighters, and the Johnson case will move forward. While fighters in that case may not be eligible to make the kind of money paid out here, they can get injunctive relief. That means a judge can rule that many of the UFC’s anti-competitive behaviors are illegal and force them to operate differently.

Judge Boulware’s class certification order ripped the UFC to shreds over its business tactics, which “were intentionally and consistently used by management to maintain contractual control of fighters and to send a message to fighters that they were essentially stuck with UFC for the life of their careers.”

With Boulware presiding over the Johnson case, there’s a chance UFC fighters could eventually see many coercive elements of their contracts deemed illegal. Hopefully it won’t take another ten years to determine.

This news first appeared on MMA Mania. Read the original article.