Possible Ripple Effects for WWE Amidst Ongoing Lawsuit Against UFC

A present legal case directed at the UFC might potentially result in WWE encountering its own complications.

As of August 9, a federal judge has given approval for the classification of plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit initially initiated against the MMA powerhouse in 2014. This translates to the lawsuit now being treated as a collective action, allowing 1,200 fighters to jointly bring a lawsuit against UFC for alleged unfair business practices.

The lawsuit contends that UFC has exploited its dominant position in the market to suppress fighter compensation. This lawsuit encompasses any fighter who participated in matches under the promotion between December 16th, 2010, and June 30th, 2017.

As noted by Dave Meltzer on the most recent edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, the repercussions of this lawsuit could extend to WWE due to the ongoing merger.

"The judge was pretty specific and very much was like the judge in the MLW case and was pretty negative when it comes to the big company and having 90% market share and abusing that power to keep salaries low.

"There are differences, but there are more similarities than differences between WWE and UFC when it comes to this because WWE has been far more anti-competitive than the UFC has.

"In terms of trying to keep other companies from flourishing, now they have not been as successful because of AEW – there is no AEW in MMA, there are people who want to be AEW like ONE and PFW…but the whole thing as far as this [is] the risks of the trial are very bad for Endeavour if this goes to trial and they lose [because] it pretty much guarantees that the ruling that would come out of the trial would be used against WWE so they would have a second lawsuit, especially now they have merged.

"So it behooves them to settle out of court but if they settle out of court it would be a lot of money. Doing that you are still going to open it up because someone is going to see that they settled out of court… and it’s the same company who runs the WWE. It’s almost a guarantee that it would happen if the UFC lawsuit is successful in any sort of way."