One of the biggest issues in the sport of MMA has been about the fighters getting together to create a Fighters’ Union. Former UFC fighter Tim Kennedy attempted to get one done years ago that publicly failed.

Tim Kennedy was recently on The MMA Hour where he spoke about the attempt to unionize a few years ago. He had some high-profile UFC fighters involved but things went south very quickly.

“We needed athletes to agree to be part of this association, this union,” the former UFC fighter explained. “And Dana White has such control on these athletes, when I said, ‘You have to sign that you’re a part of this organization, and then collectively we’ll all go back together and address healthcare, mental health, TBI [traumatic brain injury], CTE, but we’ll all do it together.’

“But as an athlete, you had to have the courage to be like, ‘This is my name, and I believe that this is the right thing to do, and I might miss a fight because of this’ — five percent of the athlete roster would do it.

“They all say they want to. We went to the major fight camps and it was like, ‘You have to sign this,’ and there was nothing besides, it’s two paragraphs that, ‘I want to be part of this organization and this organization will collectively go and address fighter issues.’

“That’s what this document said, and there was such fear of the repercussions from the organization that nobody would do it. That’s how it died. So the guys that you saw as the face of it, there were those [five], and then there were about another 25 [athletes who signed on with us], and then we had a roster of 500 that didn’t.”

The UFC president quickly stepped in to get a few of the fighters to leave the organization, including Donald Cerrone. Tim Kennedy was not happy with the way the sport was run and the impact it had on the athletes.

“It is such an insult. It is so disingenuous to ask these guys to put not just their — they’re putting their health on the line forever,” he said. “You’ve been in the sport long enough to know athletes, that, they’re broken.

“There are lots of athletes, their cognitive decline from how they performed in the ring. Physically, orthopedically, I’m sure if you watched Mark [Coleman] or Dan Henderson try to walk around.

“Even Jake Shields, he gets on the mat, he still moves — right? — but then he comes out and you’re just like, ‘Bro, what was this sport done to you? And at what cost?’ You look at golf, this last golf [news cycle], a guy just signed a $120 million one-year contract. He’s getting $2 million every time he plays golf.

“The last-place worst player on the green is making $250,000. This is golf. And these guys [in MMA] are going out and they’re looking like this? It’s such a tragedy. And I don’t know how to solve that problem besides collective bargaining.”