Plaintiffs in the long-running UFC anti-trust lawsuit got more encouraging news on Thursday when the presiding judge said he is “likely” to certify the class of fighters seeking damages from the promotion for anti-competitive practices.
On a Zoom conference call Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware said he had yet to finalize his ruling on class certification, a key step for advancing the high-profile case filed in 2014 that alleges the UFC implemented a scheme to depress fighters’ earnings and impair rivals such as Strikeforce. But on several occasions, he indicated he was “going in that direction” to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit, which would group some 1,200 fighters together against the UFC in court and potentially expose the promotion to far greater monetary damages.