After tipping his hand earlier this year, a federal judge on Thursday certified a group of UFC fighters as a class, moving forward the ongoing class-action lawsuit against the industry-leading MMA promotion and exposing it to damages from a much larger pool of potential plaintiffs.
During a Zoom conference call on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware certified the “bout class” in the lawsuit, which potentially includes every fighter who competed in the octagon between December 2010 and June 2017, a group that’s estimated at approximately 1,200 fighters. He declined to certify the identity class, which is defined by the plaintiffs as those whose image and licensing rights were exploited during that time.