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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The UFC held a teleconference on Monday to give more details on their unprecedented new accident insurance policy for all fighters under contract.
The policy will be in place for every fighter in the organization, and will be valid around the world beginning on June 1 of this year. The UFC has already begun enrolling all their fighters in the program during their annual fighter symposium in Las Vegas this week. Here's some of what the new policy will entail:
-All fighters under contract to the UFC or Strikeforce will be covered. Lorenzo Fertitta believed the total number of covered fighters to be close to 400.
-$50,000 of coverage maximum per fighter per year. That amount is supplementary to what is covered on fight nights, and fighters who suffer injuries during a fight will still get coverage under those initial policies.
-Per Fertitta, the policy will cover "everything from physician services, lab tests, emergency room, anesthetics, physical therapy, anything that would involve any type of an accident."
-Basic medical checkups such as cold and flu coverage is not included, and the deal was equated to more of a car insurance-type policy, where injuries from accidents are covered but not basic medical services.
-Fighters are covered whether they have a fight coming up or not, provided they are still under contract to the organization.
They also announced that there will be a full time employee dedicated to handling the claims of all fighters, the same employee that handles current claims from UFC events.
Both Fertitta and UFC President Dana White expressed that this type of coverage was a goal of theirs from very early on in their ownership of the organization, and it took a long time to get it all together.
"The issue of accidental insurance for fighters has been an issue, obviously, for a long time," Fertitta said during the call (transcribed by our friend Zach Arnold at FightOpinion.com). "Of course, fighters have always been and are covered for anything that happens during an event or during a fight. The complexity comes as far as providing insurance for fighters when they’re not in a fight, during their training, during time in-between and it’s unprecedented in the fact that in combat sports this has actually never been done. About three years ago, me & Dana sat down with the rest of our executive and, essentially, came to the decision that we were going to figure out how to do this, no matter what."
White added, "This is a huge deal for us, this is a big milestone in the company. You know, you always hear me talking about milestones and all the things we've accomplished, we've been trying to figure this one out since we started the company. To be here today announcing that we can finally cover these fighters... and not just for fights but for training, like Lorenzo said, it's a big day not only for this company but for combat sports in general. It's never been done. People have talked about it, people have attempted to do it, it’s never been done and now it finally has and it’s a proud moment for us."
Penick's Analysis: This really is such a great move on the UFC's part. For business reasons and otherwise, proactively taking care of their fighters with benefits like this, especially without needing to be forced into it by the development of a fighter's union, allows them some leeway with having their fighters as "independent contractors." But outside of the image, this just makes things so much easier for a lot of the lower end fighters on the roster or younger and newer fighters that haven't had time to make a lot of money to cover injury expenses, and allows them to not have to worry about their injuries to the extent they've had to in the past. There is always the possibility that this leads to more fights being called off more often, as fighters will hopefully get things taken care of instead of fighting through potentially dangerous injuries.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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