I expect the UFC to lose/settle due to the law firms involved.

They are quite obviously a monopoly abusing their power. I've heard of many instances of it over the years but no individual fighter would ever be able to afford a legal team who could compete with UFC spending. These firms can and must believe they have a case.

Biggest changes I expect will be image rights and contract terms. Currently the UFC will try and sign a fighter up to as many fights as possible on as low a fee as possible. If they win they can't re-negotiate their pay (although their market value is increasing) but if they lose a couple the contract is terminated and contract length ignored meaning it's 100% in the UFC's favor.

Any chance this can help lead to a fighters union? That would be huge for the fighters and ultimately the sport, especially if the fighters union could exists across/outside of promotional control.

Why is Elkins an underdog

This is the part that always strikes me as not fair and not consistent with other sports contracts. I hope that this changes to have a better balance of power.
I don't think a fighters union will work for the same reason a poker players union won't work. It's an individual game and people at the top don't share the same concerns as a young guy scratching the surface.

So we can assume Cung Lee is no longer to fight in the UFC, considering he's mentioned as one of the plaintiffs...

Dias looked good in his last fight with Lamas (who impressed subbing Bermudez) and Elkins had an underwhelming performance in his last fight with Martins. would be ok with him as slight fav but -190 seems way too much especially since he lost to lentz who spammed tds the first 2 rds to win.

o2.5 -275 seems like value in this fight, fight to go distance should be -240/50 when it opens and like that as well

comparing mma fighters union to poker players union isn't applicable imo. the ufc is in a unique spot bc there are maybe 5-10% of fighters i would say are top tier in terms of compensation and of those fighters only a few keep that status for more than ~3 years.

The UFC is scheduled to have 42(i think) cards in 2015, they NEED the lower and middle tier guys. If the bottom 70% at each weight in the ufc were to hold out they would be hard pressed to find passable replacements from other organizations. The UFC had all the power when it was mostly PPV cards and a few fight night/ufc on spike sprinkled in. Now the UFC is expanded to prime time Fox cards, FS1 prelims, FS1 prime time fight nights, and UFC fight pass the younger guys and lower/mid level ufc guys have a lot more power than they realize.

How much of FS1's value is based on the UFC contract? I would guess at least 25-33%

Either way, MMA needs a fighters union, independent if UFC treats its fighters good or bad. This is just for the simply reason it cannot and should not count on UFC picking the high moral route on fighter treatment and pay.

My personal opinion is that it would legitimize the sport even more, and we would get better athletes and in turn more exciting fights (I'm so excited for Jones v Cormier, will be a spectacular display of two world class athletes).

I agree with you that the power does reside in the grinders... much like poker players have when dealing with a website like Pokerstars. Organization and lack of long term thinking is what does in the players and what will likely do in lower tier MMA fighters within the organization.

Athleticism, Dias did beat Alcantara who is a more athletic Elkins basically.

Was hoping to get Dias at +100 but line seems about right

Alcantara is a 135 so Dias had a size advantage there. Dias lost to Lentz whose game is a lot more similar to Elkins than Alcantara imo. At +165 Elkins seems like a decent bet, this should be a very competitive fight

Rory MacDonald has been informed that he won't get next welterweight title shot.

http://www.mmafighting.com/2014/12/1...ght-title-shot

Am I the only one who thinks the last Hendricks/Lawler fight sucked

I don't like either Hendricks or Lawler much, and can't wait to see Rory or Lombard dethrone either of them

Hopefully this trilogy is done asap it has to be the trilogy fight unless GSP is returning nothing else makes sense

Annoying that the next title fights at 155 and 170 aren't what we want to see, but at least 135, 145, 185, 205 and HW all have good title fights next.

Ya let's just put everyone on ice while these two do a best of 17. Good lord can we get a fresh matchup goin?

I'm surprised they are going with the trilogy. It was an ok fight but no where near as good as the 1st as they knew what to expect. The 3rd fight could be worse then the 2nd.

I don't like Rory Mac much so maybe he can fight Lombard and the winner gets next shot.

Why kill a fresh contender, Lombard's already booked to fight anyway. They want 2/3 of Lombard, Rory Mac and Kelvin Gastelum to be the next 3 to fight for the title as they're the 3 most marketable (TUF winner, and the two with best shot to win the belt).

Kelvin is fighting Woodley (who ducked Lombard and as such should not get a title shot without accepting that fight or Rory Mac first even if he beats Gastelum)

Lombard is fighting Burkman (who he will probably destroy inside a round)

There's just no one suitable left for Rory to fight quite yet. Condit rematch to try and erase the loss if he's not still injured maybe? It makes more sense to fight the winner of Kelvin/Woodley I guess if he has to fight again, since I doubt Woodley gets through both Kelvin and Rory and both would be an acceptable next title shot. Lombard/Burkman winner I guess would then fight then Brown/Saffiedine winner for the next shot I guess after that since there's nobody else that fits timeline wise? I suppose Lombard could fight Rick Story especially if Hendricks is champ since Story has a win over Hendricks they can sell if he somehow beats Lombard which he won't.

By the time the champ (let's say Lawler) has fought Hendricks 3, Rory Mac/Gastelum winner and Lombard/opponents winner there should be a new clear contender at that stage due to it being multiple fights away

It's dumb though. They should have given Hendricks a should win fight (Story rematch, Brown, Mein fringe top 15 type or maybe even Gastelum/Woodley winner) while doing Lawler vs Rory Mac, then do Champ vs Hendricks if he wins while Lombard racks up highlight reel KOs, then do Lombard vs winner of Champ vs Hendricks

This next card is pretty unappealing for betting, I think I just like the Silva fight u1.5 rounds @ evens

Carneiro, Cummins and Magomedov are tempting but not that amazing. Dias if the price improves a bunch maybe.

Makes no ***** sense to not give Rory Mac the titleshot. I have no interest to see Hendricks get an immediate titleshot. Give him 1 fight, if he wins that, sure he deserves one titleshot, but immediately? No way.

1. He didn't have the status that the likes of Jones, AS, GSP who have several championship defenses. It is more like the first Cain Velasquez, after he won the championship but lost it to JDS, he had to get a tune-up fight vs a top 10 fighter.
2. He already has fought Lawler once.
3. I have never seen a fighter face the same fighter 3 times in a row, it just doesn't make sense.

This simply jams the already packed division, and when you have a packed division, it makes more since to let everybody fight everybody, then jam it up and let contenders fall off. Especially since it increases the chances you strike gold and get a definitive champion who's going to grow the stock of the division. What brings in the most money is having a guy like Jon Jones who has 6 title defenses, not a guy who wins the title, loses it in the next, wins it again. People want to see the unbeatable champ once he gets the belt.

Like, AS is legendary because he has so many title defenses, irrelevant if he lost a few fights in his earlier career. But he would not have the same status, if he had exchanged losses and wins when fighting for the belt.

Hendricks reebok deal, so they want him to be the champ? Sounds nutty but so does this trilogy. After reading the past few posts it makes even less sense then before. I want to see top 10 fighters face off against each other. Why is Lombard fighting Burke? Woodley vs Brown and Saffedine and Gastellum make more sense then two top 5 fighters facing two 8-10 ranked fighters.

Well I already posted that I liked Cummins, got 6u down at -155 avg. 3u magomedov/silverio o2.5 -205 and 1u fight goes distance -180.

Dias/Elikins goes the distance at least 80% imo so I like the o2.5, opened at -275 and improved to -260. Will bet that and fight to go distance when that opens.

Also dont mind Barao ITD -155, he knows he has to have a good performance after the weight cut issue. Gagnon gassed vs Caraway(it was his UFC debut) but he has never been in with anyone near as good as Barao and hasn't fought any quality strikers. Anything less than a finish here is bad for Barao so I expect to see a finish.

What do you know about Carneiro? Or just fading Ninimakki since he hasn't looked great last 2 outtings?

Shocked and annoyed if Hendricks gets another go. Loved that Lawler $ from last time tho, +180 was a steal.
Liking Dias, Cummings, Silva, Barao fight under and Silva fight under.

I must be the only one that does not mind the trilogy. They fought twice. Each won one. Both close fights. Both split decisions.

Isn't that the perfect reason to have a third fight? Not to mention I feel Hendricks got robbed and deserves another crack at the belt.

First wasn't a split. If we didn't have at least 2 hot contenders, or fighters away 1 fight from titleshot, sure go ahead. But we have. I could have understood if Hendricks got 100% robbed, but he didn't, it was a close fight depending on how you score different elements of the fight.

Even in boxing, you don't have 3 fights in a row with the same opponent (even 2 times in a row is not that common). It would be understandable if this was fighters at the end of their career, but both lawler and hendricks will stick around for a while.

I'm against immediate rematches in general, I like to see fresh matchups. Even Silva's immediate rematch was disappointing. Exception is robberies, draws and NC.

Additionally we have loads of great fights to do that don't plug up the division. Sucks

Well yeah but the second fight sucked. Maybe it was because the card was really good and it was an underwhelming main event though. Hendricks won the majority of the fight but Lawler finished strong and I did score 3 rounds for him even though you can definitely score r4 for Hendricks too so 48-47 Hendricks would have been fine too.

At the end of the day, Hendricks puts on bad fights when he isn't knocking people out for the most part and Lawler sometimes brings it and sometimes is just pretty bland. They're not quite Mighty Mouse level of boring (i'm talking personality, not fighting style) but they're not compelling personalities in the way that say Anderson Silva or Jon Jones are and I find it hard to get emotionally invested cheering either for or against both Lawler and Hendricks which just isn't really the case for any of the other champs

UFC is probably thinking because UFC 181 did so good, we should do Hendricks Lawler again. Why it did so good wasn't because of Lawler/Hendricks, but more like the return of Pettis, and him facing Melendez, beside it's 2 champ fights, who wouldn't buy that ppv if u sometimes buy ppv's.

Only part of the fight that was amusing was when Lawler decided to go for it, aka r1 start, r5 end, and r4 end. Don't blame Hendricks for it though, he's an excellent fighter and it's completely valid that neither fighter finishes the other considering both of the fighters toughness. It was a tough fight, Lawler didn't leave many openings and neither did Hendricks.