According to Yahoo Sports and Sports Illustrated (now former) welterweight contender Jon Fitch and his fellow American Kickboxing Academy members where banned from the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) after Fitch refused to sign over a lifetime agreement to THQ in a new group of UFC games.

UFC president, Dana White, officially released him after the disagreement, Fitch was quoted as saying "I'm more than willing to work with them, but I don't see why we have to give up our whole lives for this," Why not a time limit? If we did a 10-year deal with them, is that that unreasonable? I don't understand how this happened, honestly. It's tough.".

At this time THQ has not released any press release about the incident, but the complete article can be found here and also here.

Good for them (the fighters).

This'll make a nice trivia once the first game comes out ;)

Yeah, they were right to refuse. Anyone agreeing to it is robbing themselves of larger payoffs and signing themselves over to image slavery.

bet you their names end up in the game anyway in some way anyway.

Possibly, like the way the MLB the Show games got around Barry Bonds by using a skinny white guy in his place, LOL.

Dana White trying to get his cut and he got pissed that he didn't get an extra nickel. Keeps it up and he'll be the Vince McMahon of MMA.

Dana White is a businessman first, and a martial artist second. (If he can be even called that) Of course he'd totally sell out the moment the opportunity came along. I mean, he did that show ultimate fighter, what's to stop him from going the next step anyway?

The way I see it? He's gonna take two approaches.

1. for fighters who are not the work horse type that brings in the crowds, he'll just put someone else in his place who is RIDICULOUSLY similar but different enough that you can't warrant a law suit.

2. for fighters who ARE bread winners, he'll either start tearing that guy down hardcore while starting to bring up another guy as the new face character. after all, he's already kicked the disagreeing fighters out, it's not that hard for him to go ahead and start using his clout to bar the guy from competing in other circuits.

I thought he already was.

I'm sure they'll put someone similar in that has the proper abilities and all. If they want his name and likeness, they'll just have to renegotiate. Look for the language to enter future UFC contracts though, where negotiation after the fact will no longer be necessary.

there is a problem with that though, prized fighters are actually excruciatingly hard to develop and market. While you can have the best trainers and all that, really building up a fighter to a Chuck Liddell or Randy Couture caliber is difficult.

It's a good thing they already have the ultimate fighter program up and running. They could probably just pick someone from the season winner list and just run with that. Though, their effectiveness is probably questionable just like the Apprentice.