Unions: A battle to protect MMA fighters

John 'Doomsday” Howard, who has a 23-12 record in his 13-year career of hitting guys until they cry mercy, rolls into an L.A. Fitness in the Boston suburbs. He's three hours late to his workout, but not because he slept in. It had snowed that morning, the schools started late, and he needed to drop off his three daughters.

'I got kids, man,” Howard said.

Many professional athletes might hire a nanny. But even as a competitor in mixed martial arts who's fought around the world in a high-grossing, fast-growing sport, that's not something Howard can afford.

He's got a fight in three months, and fight camp starts two months out. That's the brutal part, he said - physically as well as psychologically, as it's the time when he starts running out of money from his most recent fight, in December.

His former promoter, Ultimate Fighting Championship, is a financial powerhouse. Its CEO, Lorenzo Fertitta, told CNN Money that it would generate $600 million in revenue for 2015, 'a record for the company.” Pay-per-view is the biggest source, but media rights and sponsorships also add up.

As MMA has grown to nearly rival tennis or golf in the value of its sponsorships and the breadth of its audience, it has failed to develop a counterweight shared by most other professional sports - some form of collective organization, setting standards for athlete compensation and other rights.

Major-league baseball, football, basketball, soccer and hockey have unions. They also pay out a much higher percentage of their revenue in player salaries than MMA promoters do.

Even the lowest-paid players on their rosters - in men's Major League Soccer, salaries start around $50,000 a year - have their training, game travel and medical insurance covered, and they enjoy such perks as per diem food allowances, a share of tournament winnings, retirement accounts, paid vacation and workers' compensation if they're injured on the job.

Not so for your everyday MMA fight, such as the one Howard fought in December.

'I got paid 25 grand,” Howard said, sitting next to his manager and workout buddy, Jonathan Sneider. 'I had to give him 2 (thousand). I had to give the gym 10 percent, another management crew 10 percent.

'So after that, the only money I see that's actually mine? Maybe 12 grand. And then I have to pay all those bills - rent, cars, fix that, fix this.”

At the beginning of the year, even that meager, occasional income almost disappeared. After Howard lost the December fight, the UFC notified him via email that it was dropping what had been a contract for four fights, leaving him scrambling to find another promoter. He signed with a smaller outfit, the World Series of Fighting.

Unlike superstars such as Conor McGregor - who surprised the MMA world when he announced his retirement this past week, then retracted it - Howard doesn't have the luxury of walking away from the modest career he's built.

Meanwhile, he's got a training gig here, an event appearance there, sometimes even working night events with a balloon company to make extra cash.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who's spent some time in the ring himself, is backing legislation that would subject MMA to the same rules that were instituted for boxing 16 years ago, giving fighters more leverage in their negotiations with the corporations running the show.

The sport of MMA emerged in the 1990s, when some promoters decided to see what would happen if they allowed two guys to go after each other without the narrow rules of fighting disciplines such as Muay Thai and jujitsu. They drew contestants and crowds, but it wasn't well-managed as a business.

MMA's fortunes turned in 2001, when casino magnates Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought the limping UFC. They made a reality show about fighters competing for contracts, gave it away to a TV network and spent millions of dollars promoting it. It was a hit, and other programming followed.

Now, according to the New York Times, the UFC estimates that as many as 40 million people watch its biggest matches on pay-per-view. It has about 523 fighters under contract.

Early on, fighters were allowed to wear attire emblazoned with their sponsors' logos in the ring, which could yield more income than the fight purse itself. Those rights gradually eroded - the UFC first banned those sponsors that competed with its own, then imposed a tax on fighters' sponsors.

It did away with personal sponsors in the ring when it cut an exclusive deal with Reebok. Fighters draw some revenue from the arrangement, but it limits their ability to seek their own sponsors who might pay them more.

UFC spokeswoman Isabelle McLemore says she believes most fighters are happy to not have to worry about chasing down their own sponsors.