Some of you may or may not have been following the legal dispute between Brandon Vera and his former manager Mark Dion.

Brandon Vera was a fast rising star in the UFC’s heavyweight ranks with an undefeated 8-0 record going into the end of 2006. Then the Vera’s career was put on hold as he sought to negotiate a new contract with the UFC and sat out nearly a full year before returning to fight at the end of 2007.

When he finally did return, Vera filed a suit with the California State Athletic Commission to allow him to break his current managerial contract with Mark Dion and City Boxing, whom Vera blamed for keeping him out of action and hiding contract negotiation information from him.

Well, Vera lost his arbitration hearing with the CSAC and Mark Dion has decided to share with the world all the legal proceedings via his website. Dion has posted court proceedings, evidence exhibits, and the full hearing transcript.

For Zuffa, a company who specializes in keeping tight-lipped about their financial dealings and contracts with fighters, this is hardly what they could have hoped for.

Here are just a few of the more interesting points from the arbitration hearing regarding the UFC

• The UFC can a contract if a fighter loses whether the fight was UFC-promoted or not.
• When a contract expires, the UFC has a 60-day exclusive negotiating period and a full 365-day period in which they can match any other promotions offer.
• The contract enforces confidentiality specifying that fighters cannot discuss or reveal their contract details to outside, third-parties.
• Fighters are entitled to two round-trip economy tickets from their hometown to the fight site and one hotel room. Those competing in championship bouts get two hotel rooms and three economy-class tickets.
• The UFC per diem for fighters is $50. The combatants get four tickets to each event with championship bout fighters getting tickets within 10 rows of the Octagon.

That suspect blue Post-it note that surfaced earlier this week and was rumored to be a contract offer from Dana White to Brandon Vera now has been proven to be legitimate.

According to Dion’s testimony at the hearing, White flew him out to Las Vegas on Dec. 4, 2006, to talk turkey. White wrote down two offers on the blue Post-it – Exhibit 39 in the hearings – divided by a line down the middle.

The first, a three-fight deal, was 90/90, 100/100 and 115/115. That meant Vera would make $90,000 the first fight and another $90,000 if he won, and so on. Another set of numbers – 150/150, 170/170 and 185/185 referred to an upgraded package if Vera won the title.

On the other side of the note is written “7 million, 4 year deal.”
Dion testified that White also made a verbal offer of a $100,000 bonus if Vera won the title.

The Post-it was par for the UFC course, according to Dion.

“UFC doesn’t send no letters, period,” he testified. “They’ve tried to avoid all that stuff.”

“This is all I got from Dana White,” he said later in his testimony. “This is all I could show to Mr. Vera. There was no e-mails. Dana White likes to keep – keep himself covered on all aspects.”

In the end, Armando Garcia and the CSAC sided with Mark Dion and ruled that Vera owed Dion one-third of his fight purse from his loss to Tim Sylvia at UFC 77, as well as $100,000 from future purses.

Garcia also stated that he felt much of the whole dispute could have been avoided if Zuffa had simply made formal contract offers and avoided using Post-it notes.

“It seems to the arbitrator that the ambiguity of the Post-it note, which appears to be the root of the current dispute, could have been avoided if the UFC had put their offer in the form of a proposed contract and sent it to (the) manager,” he wrote.

If you have the time, and are interested, I encourage you to check out all the available info Dion has posted about the incident. It will give you some good insight into the role of Zuffa, a fighter, and a manager.

Some info taken from: The Canadian Press