Mark Hunt Files Suit Against UFC, Brock Lesnar and Dana White Over UFC 200 Bout

Mark Hunt has filed a civil suit against the UFC, Brock Lesnar and Dana White, claiming racketeering, conspiracy and fraud in relation to Lesnar’s win over him (later overturned) at UFC 200. ESPN reports that Hunt filed suit in U.S. District Court today seeking compensatory and punitive damages along with a demand for the defendants to “disgorge their ill-gotten profits.”

The suit claims that the UFC and its agents “have affirmatively circumvented and obstructed fair competition for their own benefit, including being complicit in doping proliferation under the guise of advancing ‘the best anti-doping program in all of professional sports.’” It claims that the UFC did so via methods “including but not limited to various and rampant purported use exemptions, drug testing exemptions and by failure to enforce its own policies.”

Hunt argues that UFC officials were either knowledgable or willfully indifferent to Lesnar’s use of banned substances, pointing to his exemption from the requirement that fighters participate in the USADA’s testing pool for four months before fighting. Hunt told the site, “I want the UFC to understand it’s not OK to keep doing what they’re doing. They’re allowing guys to do this. They had a chance to take all the money from this guy, because he’s a cheater, and they didn’t. What message is that sending to the boys and girls who want to be a fighter someday? The message is, ‘You just have to cheat like this and it’s OK.’ In society, if you commit a crime, you pay. Why is it different in MMA? It’s hurt the business, so it’s even worse. They need to be held accountable for this.”

Lesnar was given an exemption due to a rule that claims the UFC can do so “in exceptional circumstances or where the strict application of that rule would be manifestly unfair to an Athlete.”

Hunt claims the exemption allowed him to fight an opponent with an unfair advantage and that he “suffered severe physical injury, as well as economic and non-economic damages including without limit damage to his reputation, title contention, and future earning capacity.”

Hunt also claims that the UFC’s behavior at UFC 200 “is representative of and consistent with a pattern of conduct by Defendants of wrongfully jeopardizing fighter health and safety for profit, in violation of state and federal law and the UFC’s own policies. The UFC’s pattern of conduct includes, but is not limited to, granting doping exemptions and drug testing exemptions to known doping competitors, and causing those drug-enhanced fighters to compete with clean fighters.”