Bellator fighter Leslie Smith, formerly of UFC, has pointed out certain obligations in wrestler contracts that essentially make them employees.
Unionization is something being looked into pretty strongly by wrestlers at the moment, with WWE's order for performers to get off third-party platforms and the firing of Zelina Vega sparking controversy.
As it stands, WWE considers its wrestlers to be independent contractors and don't provide them with certain benefits as a result. Given the latter, they're thought to be under the microscope having been accused of misclassifying employees to free them of obligations they would have otherwise had to stick to.
Democratic senator Andrew Yang has been pretty vocal about this and had assured he'd seek to take WWE to task if Joe Biden won the U.S presidential election.
Smith, who recently spoke to Wrestling Inc. on The Wrestling Inc. Daily Podcast, championed the move for MMA fighters to be under an association through Project Spearhead.
"There's a list of characteristics of being an employee that a person looks at when they're determining whether or not a job is an employee type situation or an independent contractor situation, and you mentioned that they can't work elsewhere," she explained. "Dana would probably say, 'Well, they can do anything else that they want. They just can't fight for another promotion.' Well, yeah, that's true, but if that's what they make their job, I mean, you can't take a shoemaker and tell a shoemaker that they can work wherever else they want to except in their industry. That's not giving them freedom.
"So that argument doesn't work there. They're not allowed to contract with other promotions to get to do their job, which is fighting, but then there's also smaller aspects of it. Like for example, the fact that when they actually do their job inside the cage, they are using the UFC's equipment. That's one of the characteristics. Also, that their actions are actually very highly controlled. From the time that they walk out into the cage, they're supervised. They're not doing their job unsupervised. That's one of the characteristics of an independent contractor."
The Uniforms Matter Too
Smith highlighted the fact that wrestlers are being made to work in ring gear picked out by the company. She claims it's another method of exercising control.
"Also, the uniforms and that goes for pro wrestling as well. When people go out, I mean, they have personalized uniforms, but they have to wear what they have to wear," she pointed out. "Same thing with the UFC fighters, definitely another characteristic of being an employee because it's the level of control that's being exerted over a person while they're working that really makes the difference."
Source: Wrestling Inc.