1. Richard Lovett (Let me Explain)
Don’t know who Richard Lovett is? Well he’s the guy that represents the most significant threat to the UFC since John McCain tried to shut the company down before UFC 9.
Richard Lovett is the President of the Creative Artists Agency, a rival talent agency to WME-IMG. His agency also represents a few MMA fighters including Georges St. Pierre, Donald Cerrone, Tim Kennedy, TJ Dillashaw and Cain Velasquez. What else do those fighters have in common? They were all announced as part of the new MMA Athletes Association. It doesn’t take much to see who is bankrolling the group’s efforts.
So why would a rival talent agency want to lobby for the rights of MMA fighters? Because doing so would hurt the profitability of an investment made by their rivals, WME-IMG. If new measures are taken to ensure fighters are compensated fairly and that title shots are given to the most deserving fighters (as opposed to fighters who draw the best PPV numbers) it could really hurt the WME-IMG’s bottom line.
If WME-IMG’s investment starts to make less money then they have less resources available to woo big-money Hollywood clients that Richard Lovett’s Creative Artists Agency can then scoop up. You see MMA has become a proxy war between two big Hollywood agencies. Funny how these things sometimes go.
