The Sports Inquirer

Music to listen to:  Zion Train/Exodus (live) by Bob Marley

This week, the UFC has made the unprecedented announcement that all of their fighters will now be under an insurance policy.

Before I get into my thoughts on it and why you should care about this if you’re a sports fan, here are the highlights of the policy from MMAJunkie.com :

-Everyone is covered under the new plan. That includes fighters under the Strikeforce banner, and those residing outside of the U.S. All told, (Lorenzo) Fertitta estimated the number of athletes to be at 400.

-Zuffa pays 100 percent of the premiums for the policy. There are no monthly fees incurred by the fighter for participating in the plan.

-A fighter’s yearly maximum benefit is $50,000. Covered expenses include doctor’s visits, lab tests, emergency room visits, physical therapy – anything related to an injury that may arise in the course of training or that would prohibit a fighter from competing (such as slipping and falling on ice while walking to his car).

-The policy stays in effect regardless of whether a fighter has a booking. As long as the fighter is under contract with Zuffa, the benefits remain.

-The policy does not cover routine medical visits.

-Zuffa’s supplemental insurance policy that covers athletes on fight night stays intact.

-A full-time Zuffa employee is set to handle claims arising from the new policy. It’s the same employee who handled claims arising from fight night.

-There are no provisions in a Zuffa fighter’s contract that prevent other activities associated with risk.

First, the fact that every fighter is covered is significant.  That means whether you spend your time in New Jersey, train in Brazil, have residence in Australia, conduct your training camp in Germany, you get coverage.

Even more important, this shows that the dangers of mixed martial arts has been acknowledged in a tangible form.

As physician Matt Pitt of Sherdog.com pointed out in his article linked at his name:

MMA is a new sport, and there are a vanishingly small number of professional fighters. As a result, the health risk statistics associated with MMA are based on perhaps 2,000 poorly documented work years; for, firefighting the number of work years with which to build statistical models is in the multi-millions.

As you can see in the plan, there will be around 400 fighters who will be part of this plan.  There are regional offices for mid-sized businesses in the United States that have double the employees who have insurance plans.  The sample size is much higher for older companies.

Sports such as football, baseball, ice hockey, basketball, etc. have decades of evidence to set their policies.  The NFL has information on how much repairing a torn knee ligament will cost.  Major League Baseball can estimate within dollars how much it would cost a pitcher to have elbow surgery and how it may affect his ability to make a living.

How do you measure the risk of a catastrophic MMA injury?  How many hours of training does it take for a knee to fatigue to the point of needing rehabilitation?  How many fights does it take for a fighter to suffer a concussion?  Does every fight result in head trauma?

As Zuffa has admitted, there are still administrative work to be done to finalize the details of this deal, but the fact that they found an insurance provider is a major start.

The fact that there are no monthly fees to the policy is significant as well.  While many expect fighters to be pulling six-figures per fight and be clearing several millions of dollars per year, that isn’t always the case.  There are plenty of fighters who are struggling to pay for health care currently and any break financially is appreciated.

Two final points before I close.

1) This policy is significant because it takes care of fighters in the aspect of their lives where they are at the most risk physically, training for the fight itself.

While most people may assume that fighters are at the most risk in actual competition, a significant amount of injuries are suffered in training.

Currently, here’s a short list of Zuffa fighters who suffered injuries in training and have been prevented from participating in scheduled fights in the coming months because of it.

-UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar

-UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones

-UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez

-Grey Maynard

-Jon Fitch

-B.J. Penn

Those are some of the biggest names in all of MMA who are going to need months of rehabilitation, medical examinations and many other things covered in the new insurance policy to return to form.

In the past, the fighter, who technically is an independent contractor competing under the jurisdiction of the promotion and in turn athletic commission hosting the event, similar to a professional wrestler or boxer, would have to take care of his rehab on his own.

If the fighter suffered an injury at the actual fight, he had coverage but wasn’t taken care of the week after when he has to prepare for his next fight.

This provision shows that Zuffa is making steps to treating its fighters like professional athletes.

If an NFL player tears a knee ligament while he’s under contract with his team, there’s an insurance policy that will support his recovery process to return to action.  If the before mentioned MLB pitcher needs ligament replacement surgery on his elbow, the team will not only provide consultation on the surgery, but will make provisions for the pitcher to have rehab sessions with a trainer, access to machinery in the athletic facility, braces and other apparatuses needed to physically recover.

2) I’m interested to see how far the scope of the insurance policy will go.

I’m sure that if a fighter breaks a leg skydiving, suffers a back injury crashing a motorcycle or something along those lines, participating in a high-risk activity non-training related, the new policy won’t help him.

However, there will be one fighter who will have an accident in a non-traditional way while “training.”

What if someone is running in steep mountains but gets an injury by falling on a rock?  Was he training for a fight?  What risk does doing something outdoors with potentially rough elements like sharp rocks compare to an indoor facility?

What about someone who hurts their shoulder swimming in the ocean for fun but claims that he was “training?”

Other professional sports leagues have had these situations come up and dealt with them.  Zuffa hasn’t had this happen yet but will figure it out over time.

Some teams will have mental therapy, such as sessions with sports psychologists, in their policy as well.  There was no mention of such provisions in the Zuffa policy but I’m sure that this will become an issue during the final stages of preparing the plan.

I’m also curious if family members of the fighters, specifically spouses and children, will be part of the policy in the future.  Through following the current NFL labor situation, we learned that family members of NFL players were indeed covered in some form of insurance over the years.  Now that there is currently no labor agreement in the NFL, no one is receiving insurance and this has caused strain for players used to being covered, or at least having the ability to have their wives or children covered.

In the end, this is a good day for combat sports and hopefully professional wrestling and boxing can develop something along these lines as well.

Those are my thoughts.  What are yours?