Leslie Smith, an MMA veteran, told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that she is planning  legal action against the UFC. Her reasoning is that essentially the UFC bought her out ofher contract last week prior to UFC in Atlantic City.

Smith leads a fighter unionization effort, she is also the interim president of Project Spearhead. This group wants the U.S. government to determine whether or not UFC fighters are employees or independent contractors.

Smith was a Top 10 ranked fighter in UFC and had to miss her final fight due to her opponent missing weight by 1.8 pounds. Smith offered to still fight however wanted a new deal. The UFC instead bought out Smith and now a lawsuit brews.

Smith has stated that the buyout is unprecedented and was done to “go away”. She called the UFC’s actions, in what she believes was basically paid to “go away”. She is taking these claims to the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and a court in her home state of California.

“It’s my opinion that what the UFC did was illegal,” Smith said. “Because they have created a situation where it encourages a climate of fear where the other people in the UFC on the roster are going to be fearful of publicly organizing and standing up for their rights.

“By creating a climate of fear, that violates federal law. That’s the whole point of the National Labor Relations Board and the laws that are in there.”

Smith was surprised about being let go becauze although she launched the unionization attempts, UFC president Dana White and matchmaker Sean Shelby are not necessarily having negative interactions with her.

“I guess in a way I guess I was almost hoping that Project Spearhead would be significant enough for them to be a little bit worried about it,” Smith said. “And then the fact that they did this unprecedented thing where they bought out my contract, so that I wouldn’t be around anymore kind of shows that they do think Project Spearhead is pretty significant.”

Smith said she’s still “100 percent” behind the Project Spearhead push, despite no longer being eligible for a potential union because she’s not a UFC fighter anymore. She believes she will get the 30 percent of UFC fighters to sign cards they need in order to bring that to the NLRB. That would begin the process of determining whether UFC fighters are misclassified as independent contractors. The deadline for the signatures, Smith said, is Feb. 12, 2019.

“The important thing now is to make it so that other fighters don’t have to take the fall,” Smith said. “They don’t have to do anything publicly in order to protect themselves right now. All they have to do is sign authorization cards. That’s it. Nobody will ever know. The National Labor Relations Board will never release their names.”

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