DREAM Turning “Nightmare” For Some Fighters

Reports of DREAM, the Japanese based MMA promoter, being slow on payments to their fighters again are surfacing. The list of fighters seem to only include American fighters as well.  MMA Junkie reported on it on Friday and again this Monday morning.

The US Representative for DREAM, Mike Kogan, had this to say:

“They’re not getting stiffed,” Kogan said of Moore and Ambriz. “Let me put it this way: They’ll get their money. There’s been reports in the past that we were a little slow in paying, and to a lot of the American fighters, it might seem a little weird. Because with the commission here against how the promoters pay in the U.S. — right after the event they get their checks — we don’t do that. But that’s disclosed in the contracts.”

“As far as I know the contract stipulates that all fighters will get paid within the month following the month in which they fought,” Kogan said. “So if they fought in September, then they would have been paid in October. If they still haven’t been paid then, there’s probably either some kind of accounting error or backlog or something else unrelated to any kind of a problem — more of an administrative issue.

“I know for a fact that our accounting department issues payments — not just for fighters, but in general — every 15 days. So if they were backlogged in October, they might have put it onto the November roster.”

The list of fighters that have received slow payment from DREAM include but may not be limited to: Nick Diaz, Todd Moore, Jimmy Ambriz and Joseph Benavidez.

Kogan had a relatively humurous statement about Diaz’s payment:

“In Nick Diaz’s case, I don’t know who, but obviously there’s a lot of people that work for FEG in our accounting department,” Kogan said. “And half of them don’t even know what Nick Diaz looks like. They’re just paper-pushers. Well somebody apparently filed his (account) as paid. So as far as our accounting was concerned, he was paid.”

Way to throw those clerical people under the bus and make their jobs look meaningless Kogan.  Fantastic job!

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