Randy Couture- Dana White Press Conference & Fall Out

Tyler Durden

The very public war of words between UFC and Randy Couture peaked this week with both sides holding press conferences to explain their side of the story. In the end, it appears to be what I figured it was from day one, a breakdown due to an obvious lack of communication. In many ways, it's like we're all watching the divorce proceedings between Randy Couture and Dana White.

The first UFC press conference took place Thursday, head-to-head with Randy's conference, largely about things have nothing to do with Couture. Dana said the conference had been in the making for awhile and they didn't run it head-to-head with Randy to fuck with him. Lorenzo Fertitta went home that night and watched Randy's conference on Mark Cuban's HDNet, and immediately called Dana and said they needed to go public with their side, strongly feeling that Randy's conference was designed to hurt the company.

At the Thursday conference, UFC announced that they had signed a new deal with Spike TV, believed to be for an amount in excess of the $100 million offer that had been on the table for several months. The agreement extends the current deal (which has another years or so left) through 2011. It includes seasons nine through twelve of the Ultimate Fighter, 12 live fight cards (four per year) hosted by Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg; two seasons of a "new, weekly live fight series"; and 39 new episodes of UFC Unleashed hosted by Goldberg. At press time, the specifics of the live series had not been hammered out, though it is said that it will involve fighters of a level above those appearing on TUF.

“With the tremendous success and the record ratings we have achieved over the years, I am very happy to have Spike TV as UFC’s cable partner,� Dana said in the press release. “I am excited to continue our relationship with the team that has supported UFC from the very beginning, and to have even greater success with all of our UFC programming on Spike TV.�

“We are proud to be the television home of the country’s hottest sports brand which is now firmly established as a major, regulated sports franchise with an ever-growing fan base,� said Kevin Kay, President, Spike TV. “It is a testament to the dedication and foresight of UFC President Dana White that the UFC has emerged, since its debut on Spike TV three years ago, as a must-have for viewers and advertisers alike.�

The deal was signed shortly after it was announced that HBO had fallen through. In an interesting sidenote, Dana indicated this new deal was non-exclusive and allows them to sign other deals with HBO, EPSN, etc. That's huge, because exclusivity was the one thing that more than anything else would hamper UFC's plans for expansion as a mainstream sport in America. Dana has said on many occasions that while HBO has fallen through, he's confident that at some point a deal will eventually be made. Getting on ESPN would also be important because while ESPN has covered them in the past, being an ESPN property would vastly increase their level of coverage on the channel. The feeling is that all of the ESPN coverage leading into Quinton Jackson vs. Chuck Liddell helped boost that fight well above what it would have done with just Spike TV promotion. Dana has also hinted that there is another huge broadcast deal in the works for 2008.

Randy's conference aired live on ProElite.com and Yahoo.com from his Xtreme Couture gym in Vegas. He said there had been issues since he first came to UFC. They got off on the wrong foot regarding ancillary rights to his likeness, which caused him to be pulled out of the video game. He said he never felt that he was used appropriately, felt he'd been disrespected, and that he could cite a number of different issues but didn't want to sound petty. He said people would accuse him of being happy when he signed his deal just eight months ago, but he wasn't. He said he asked for a signing bonus, and noted that the financial end had changed in the time that he was off. He said he wasn't happy with the money, but it wasn't about the money at the time, it was about fighting. He said if you aren't willing to walk away from a deal then you have to accept it, and so he accepted it.

He said he couldn't figure out why they wouldn't give the signing bonus to him even though they'd given it to others. He said the final straw was when he saw how much guys from PRIDE were being paid or offered to come in, and it was so much more than he had made. He said Chuck Liddell made $17 million last year, and that he had information right here about how much he was paid for both the Tim Sylvia and Gabriel Gonzaga fights. He passed a printout around and singled out Kevin Iole, who he said had written a column for Yahoo! that was grossly inaccurate about how much he had been paid. He said the only thing not listed was what his PPV cut was. He said he was one of the few athletes that had the leverage to demand such a thing, and so far he'd made about $500,000 in bonuses from the Chuck and Tim fights. He said if you add that into his base salary, it was clearly nothing in the neighborhood of $12 to $15 million for the year. He said that was the last straw, and once the Fedor fight went away, the only fight left that meant anything to him, it only made sense to walk away.

He said it had been stated that his "Hollywood agent", who wasn't actually his agent in Hollywood, had screwed things up. He said it wasn't like he just got into acting; this was his seventh movie over the course of many years, and while he enjoyed doing acting and such he was still a fighter first and foremost. He said his MMA agent didn't even get paid off his PPV earnings, he just helped him out with his sporting endeavors and such. He said he was tired of swimming upstream, tired of swimming against the current, and something needed to change. He said he had a face-to-face meeting with Dana and Lorenzo and laid out all of this in person, the same discussion he was having right now, two weeks before he left for South Africa. He said he gave them the chance to respond.

He said one major area of contention was why he didn't get a bonus for the Gonzaga fight. He waited two and a half weeks, didn't get a response, and so he quit. He said he had the letter of resignation at the face-to-face meeting and could have given it to them right there, but he gave them a chance to think about it instead. He said he had no hard feelings towards Lorenzo and certainly not Frank, and he didn't think Dana was a bad guy and wasn't going to get into a pissing match with him.

In the Q&A session, Couture said regarding the contract that bout number and term were both important. He said it was his understanding that if it was an 18-month, four-fight contract, that meant all four fights had to take place during that period (and thus he is free in nine months). He said this wasn't about going somewhere else, though. He said he was offered $3 million to fight Fedor in Bodog last year, more than he'd ever made for a single fight, but being loyal to UFC he went to Dana and told them what he'd been offered. Dana suggested they needed someone to fight Sylvia for the title and the rest is history (interestingly, he's told a different story in the past, that he saw Sylvia fight and went to UFC specifically asking for the match, and Dana told that same story at his press conference). He said right now he'd resigned from UFC but wasn't going to say he was retired because "nobody's gonna buy that crap anyway." He was asked if he could see M-1 lending Fedor to UFC, and he said anything was possible but he'd heard nothing about that. He was asked if any of the other Xtreme Couture fighters were going to walk out, and what he thought of guys making $5,000 to fight on PPV. He said it was not his intention, but if this lead to better deals for other fighters than that was icing on the cake. He said UFC bonuses were given after shows via check and it was at management's discretion.

He said he got that bonus for the Chuck and Sylvia fight, but nothing for the Gonzaga fight. "Makes a big difference in my pay." It should be noted that due to steroid test failures, UFC has changed policy and now only hands out bonuses after everyone's steroid tests come back clean, so this was likely why he wasn't given a check in the locker room after that fight as usual. Someone asked if the damage was irreparable. He said nothing was irreparable, but he'd felt this way for a long time and the understanding of what other guys were making and the offer to Fedor was the final slap in the face. He said even if Fedor had signed, he wasn't going to ask for a renegotiation or changes in his contract. Well, he should have. He should have been paid at least as much as Fedor for that fight. He claimed he talked to Dana and Lorenzo recently and told them that this wasn't about trying to burn down the company or anything like that, he was simply doing what he told them he might do when he met with them two weeks prior. He said Lorenzo had offered to open up the books so he could see exactly how much he and other guys were paid for their fights. He claimed zeros were not the issue here and that nobody was going to feel sorry for him for the money he made in the sport. He said he'd gotten a ton of offers since this came up, and the support was overwhelming. He said the M-1 standing offer to fight Fedor was interesting, but in the end this wasn't about leaving and going somewhere else.

The second UFC press conference on Tuesday afternoon, called specifically to refute what Randy had said days earlier, aired on Yahoo.com and UFC.com. Dana was joined by Chief Financial Officer John Mulkey and co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta. Dana said this was tough for him because he hated talking about money, but talking about money was a big issue in sports today. He said UFC was going through growing pains right now, the office wasn't big enough, they had 200 fighters under contract and only 100 employees, and although he tried the best he could to make sure everyone had a good relationship it was clear that Randy had issues. He said he wasn't going to say anything bad about him and considered him a friend, but the statements he made financially and such were not true.

He said he was not going to berate or debate him, he was going to just give the facts.
He said Randy's wife made the comment that Randy had never been promoted by them. He said Ultimate Fighter was the thing that shot UFC into the stratosphere, and Randy was a coach on season 1 and a consultant on season 2, and a coach again on season 4. August 23rd was Randy Couture Day on Spike, a deal they set up for him, and he said he could go on and on forever. He said Randy was a star because they got behind him and promoted him. Kim also said that Randy made just as much outside the ring as he did inside. Dana said that was great, many of the big stars did. He said the idea was that once guys were done fighting, hopefully they would be set up to do things elsewhere. "That's our goal here."

Dana said sports should be about the sport, not the money, and he hated the fact that they had to go through these numbers. He said the bottom line was everyone was taken care of very well, so they were going to walk us all through the pay structure. Lorenzo said he didn't do a lot of interviews, but he was very close to Randy and a friend, and he was the guy who negotiated this contract back in January. He said Randy was claiming he was never happy with the contract, but after they shook hands and hugged Randy seemed very happy. He said he watched the Thursday press conference and felt the statements Couture made so grossly misresprented the facts that they needed to protect themselves. He said you can only be silent for so long, the facts are the facts and they had the facts. He said the story about not getting a signing bonus was incorrect and they had the bonus check that he'd cashed in January.

John walked through the numbers. He said Randy had been given a $500,000 signing bonus, half paid on signing and half paid after his first fight. They had the letter dated January 12th and the January 30th cancelled check for $250,000. He said Randy stated that he was upset for not getting the bonus and didn't mention the $250,000 per year employment fee or the $56,000 in commentating fees that he was paid. John said for UFC 68, Randy received a $250,000 purse plus the second half of the signing bonus of $250,000. His PPV bonus was $936,000 based on an estimated 534,000 buys, so his total compensation was $1.856 million. He said Randy claimed his PPV bonus was $500,000 which was incorrect and they had the checks to prove it. He said for UFC 74 Randy got a $250,000 purse, a $35,000 bonus for fight of the night, and a $787,000 bonus off an estimated 485,000 buys. His total compensation was therefore $1.072 million.

Regarding timing of the payment for UFC 68, through October 12th he's gotten five checks totaling $924,000. Every check was cashed except the latest $17,000. UFC will get payment for the next PPV in a few weeks and would then pay him his bonus within ten days per their bout agreement. He said discretionary bonuses were over and above contractual obligations, taxable income to fighters, and documented expenses of the company.

Dana said to walk through this, Randy asked for a half million dollar signing bonus and got it. He said this guy lost twice to Liddell via knockout, retired, was gone for a year, then called and told them he wanted to come back and fight Sylvia. Dana said sure, and was willing to give him the signing bonus. But, Dana said, if Randy at 44 hurt his back or blew out his knee, they weren't getting the money back. So they said $250,000 up front and $250,000 after the fight. "This is the signing bonus he completely forgot about," Dana said. It appears the issue here is semantic. Randy claims the $500,000 he got after the Sylvia fight was just a $500,000 bonus for the fight. UFC claims it was his signing bonus.

Unfortunately for Couture, in the documentation UFC passed around at the press conference there was a copy of a confidential letter to Couture dated January 12th that specifically referred to the first $250,000 as "a Fighter Signing Bonus". Dana added that what Couture claimed for his PPV buyrate bonus was off by $436,000. He said he didn't know if there had ever been a promoter that paid guys more than they were contractually obligated to get. He said they gave guys more money just for having great fights or knockouts or whatever. He was offended by the "off the books" statement, saying Randy was making it sound like they were paying them under the table. He was also appalled that Randy said UFC was a monopoly. Dana said never in the history of MMA have there been more opportunities for fighters. He said five groups, including some run by billionaires, had started up this year alone. He said just because UFC was better and did it better didn't make them a monopoly.

I should note that the bout agreement that Randy passed out at his press conference claimed that he would make $1 per buy for 100,000 to 175,000 PPV buys (nothing of late has come close to dropping that low); $1.50 for 175,000 to 300,000 buys; $2 for $300,000 to 330,000 buys (a bottom of the barrel show will hit that, though I think only the Belfast show this year dropped that low); and $3 per buy for 330,000 plus (virtually everything nowadays). Dana was very upset that Randy made this information public and considered it a breach of contract. The bout agreement was unsigned, which Kevin Iole noted while stating that he stood by his $12 to $15 million claim. It is believed he had a legitimate source for the information, but the fact that the UFC side had all the documentation plus cancelled checks makes it pretty much impossible to figure out where the remaining $10 million or so would have come from.

And for those of you wondering how $3 per buy above 330,000 buys equals a $936,000 bonus for a show that did 534,000 buys, well, it's complicated, and the fact that I suck at math made this a very shitty 20 minutes. Basically, $3 times 534,000 buys equals $1,602,000. However, the pay scale is wacky and it's not a case where if the PPV does above $330,000 you get $3 for every buy. Instead, you get $1 per buy from 100,000 to 175,000, $1.50 per buy from 175,000 to 300,000, etc. So on a show that did 534,000 buys, he made $75,000 for the first 175,000 buys; $187,500 for 175,000 to 300,000; $60,000 for 300,000 to 330,000; and $612,000 for 330,000 to 534,000. Christ I'd hate to be their accountant. But when you read the scale that way, the numbers make sense.
UFC, as noted, passed around documentation of everything they'd spoken about, which we received copies of. This included the January 12th letter noting the "Fighter Signing Bonus" and copies of all the checks that Randy had cashed since January, including both signing bonus checks (the first of which was dated January 15th in the amount of $250,000, and the second of which was dated March 3rd in the amount of $249,571) and ten UFC 68 bonus checks in various amounts from May 10th through August 9th totaling $906,608 (two checks sent in October for $17,232 and $726 hadn't cleared yet).

Notes from the Q&A. Lorenzo said Randy had called the day before the press conference and he thought they'd had a good conversation. He said apparently he was wrong, and he was dismayed by what he'd seen at the press conference. "I felt like he'd damaged us as a company," hence this press conference follow-up. Dana and Lorenzo said regarding the meeting two weeks before Randy quit, yes, Randy had aired his grievances, but in the end they felt they'd ended the meeting on a positive note. He said Randy had said that in his opinion, the only fight he wanted was the fight with Fedor, and without that fight he may retire. Dana said he jumped them right at the start of the meeting and he found that interesting. He said he'd had it out with every major guy, including Chuck Liddell, but they didn't expect that from Randy that day, but when it was over Dana said listen, I'll get back to you on this. He said Randy never told them they had two weeks to get back to him, and because it was September it was completely insane and two weeks was like two hours. "We've never said no to him." He said they were going to deal with it and figure it out, but suddenly it was over. Dana was asked about losing their number one fighter and the number one fighter in the world and he sort of went off, saying Fedor was not the number one fighter in the world. He said starting back in 2005, Fedor faced Mirko Crocop, then Zulu Jr., (who he claimed was a joke) then Mark Hunt ("a kickboxer"), then a 42-year-old Mark Coleman, then a 185-pound Matt Lindland ("who couldn't beat Quinton at 205 and moved up to heavyweight for Fedor"). "Fedor is a farce. Randy Couture is the number one heavyweight in the world. Fedor is not the number one fighter in the world, Randy Couture is." Regarding payments, he said, "Hell no, I wasn't going to pay Fedor more than Randy Couture." He said Fedor wasn't a top five heavyweight in the world and wasn't saying that just because he lost him, he'd always said that and was only making that fight for Randy (and in fact there are interviews with Dana from months and months back where he said the exact same thing). He said the whole thing made him feel like he'd been kicked in the throat. He did note that if he could work things out with Tito Ortiz than he could clearly work things out with Randy Couture. He said he was never going to talk about this ever again after today, he was never going to talk about money again, and we probably wouldn't see Lorenzo doing a press conference for another ten years. Get your questions in now, he demanded.

Dana said they considered Randy the UFC Heavyweight champion at this point, and that later this week they were going to offer him a fight for January, probably against Nogueira. However, no date for a future meeting has been set up. If Randy turns it down, "he's turning it down because he's gonna retire". He said if that was the case, they'd take number one and number two and they'd fight for the title.

They were asked if something like this made them consider perhaps being more open about what everyone was paid. Dana said no, most guys didn't want their payments talked about, and it personally made him sick to his stomach to have to discuss it.
They were asked whether Randy was contractually obligated for two more fights or nine months. "We'll find out," Dana said. He said they felt they were in the right here and they never tried to do anything underhanded or sneaky. Dana was now getting hot. "We expect him to stand behind this contract." Later, when asked for contract details, specifically whether there was a "freezing" clause should someone resign prior to finishing all their fights, he refused to answer.

In regards to that, MMA Weekly uncovered the standard wording as it regards retirement in a UFC fighter's contract. “If at any time during the Term, Fighter decides to retire from mixed martial arts or other professional fighting competition, then ZUFFA may, at its election, (i) suspend the Term for the period of such retirement; (ii) declare that ZUFFA has satisfied its obligation to promote all future Bouts to be promoted by ZUFFA hereunder, without any compensation due to Fighter therefore; or (iii) elect to provide Fighter with notice of an Acceleration.� Those are some varied options, and obviously it explains why Dana insists that Randy is retired and Randy insists that he's resigned. Randy's insistence to use that word suggests that he's aware of the retirement suspension of terms clause, though it should be noted that we cannot confirm whether this same wording was used in his contract.

When the war of words ended, Dana had really put it best. "I have no idea what's going on." It's a question that may not ever be answered, even if both sides kiss and make up. Randy spent an entire press conference talking the financial side, all the while saying this wasn't about money. UFC gave their side of the story, and really, what they claimed he was making and what he claimed he was making wasn't that far apart; this is not the difference between tens of millions of dollars. The crux of the issue may be in Couture's statement that while it's not about the money, money does signal how much respect a company has for a person. He feels, rightly or wrongly, that he's been disrespected, and he feels very strongly about this. When you consider that Lorenzo Fertitta hates press conferences and Dana White hates talking money, the fact that Lorenzo appeared at a press conference and Dana talked money tells you that they truly believe that they are in the right here, and that they do respect Couture. So while Couture's financial claims in the end look a bit funky, the reality is that both sides have a grievance they feel passionately about. After listening to both press conferences, my feeling, like Dana's, is that something doesn't add up here, and that Couture has to be unhappy about something he hasn't mentioned, or he hasn't done a good job explaining why he felt justified in walking away from what can be documented as a very good contract. In the end it might come down to UFC opening up their books privately to him, to show him what everyone else really is making right now. I do not think they would be averse to doing this, and I think that Couture should accept such an offer since his biggest bone of contention early on was that they were lying about him being the second highest-paid fighter in the company.

Dana White has been compared many times to Vince McMahon. This was the week where I came to believe that, if anything, he is an evolved version. Vince McMahon has had fallings-out with superstars in the past, most recently Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan. Although he's been a wrestling promoter for nearly as long as I've been alive, for some reason he never learns that when fallouts occur, ultimately time heals all wounds and they are almost always resolved. The power of Steve Austin as a draw was absolutely hurt after Vince completely buried him when Austin walked out in 2002 over professional issues related in some ways to being asked to lose clean to Brock Lesnar in a King of the Ring qualifying match. Vince said he'd never ever EVER be back. He was back nine months later. Dana admitted during his press conference that this was in some ways a very trying time for the company, and he's under a lot of stress. Yet when faced with this situation, no matter how much he may have wanted to go off on a Tito Ortiz-style tirade, he knew that this was Randy Couture and to do so would be a bad move professionally, both because you can't say there is no chance of Couture coming back and because Couture is so beloved by the fans and it's tough for management to not look like the assholes in a situation like this. There are so many ways UFC could have mishandled this situation, and they've done an excellent job trying to professionally explain their side of the story without burying the other party. In fact, they did such a good job with the Tuesday press conference that there was a fair deal of sympathy for their plight afterwards where there had not been before. Because UFC is trying to take a sport that was on death's door and turn it into a part of mainstream sports culture, and because they're in many ways considered the only real game in town, they're in for a number of roadblocks and hurdles far bigger than this one. The good news is that, at least this week, Dana White came off far closer to the Vince McMahon who has managed to overcome everything than the Eric Bischoff who couldn't handle the pressure when the chips were down and lost it all.

From f4wonline.com