Former champion Smith says fighters are "hurt, exploited or forgotten" as GFA seeks inquiry

Former British champion Paul Smith said fighters are "hurt, exploited or forgotten" in a failing system in a BBC Sport article published on 26 October 2026, speaking as part of the Global Fighters' Association's campaign to launch what it calls the "biggest ever inquiry into health and safety in combat sport." Smith is one of the key figures behind the initiative, which wants to examine the sport's treatment of athletes.

The Global Fighters' Association (GFA) was set up last year with the stated aim of creating a union to safeguard fighters' futures and to become "the new umbrella organisation for all combat sport." The group says it will campaign for fair contracts, better pay, insurance and pensions, proper health and safety standards and an official channel for fighters to report problems. It cites recent public fundraisers that have helped fighters such as Lee Reeves pay for emergency care after serious injuries as evidence of current shortcomings.

Smith, who challenged three times for a super-middleweight world title before his retirement in 2017, criticised the absence of formal support for injured fighters. "Every week, somewhere in this sport, a fighter is hurt, exploited or forgotten, and the only safety net is whatever the boxing community can scrape together after the fact," he said. "That's not a system. That's a failing. We are not aware of anyone, ever, who has properly invested the time and resources to get under the bonnet of this sport, work out exactly where it is failing fighters, and publish actionable recommendations to fix it."

The GFA has secured barrister Jonathan Caplan KC to lead the proposed inquiry, which it says will examine the "safety, governance and treatment of combat sports participants at all levels" from grassroots to professional. Caplan will be tasked with producing a report based on evidence and testimonies gathered during the process, the GFA said. The organisation is described in the article as a non-profit.

Chair designate Simon Bazalgette framed the initiative by comparing welfare standards across sports and listing what the GFA sees as gaps in combat sport. "Over the last decade or so, professional sports such as rugby, football and horse racing have raised their game when it comes to the welfare of the participants," Bazalgette said. He added that "it is striking that combat sport is one of the last workplaces with no professional representation for its workers, meaning little protection, no minimum health and safety standard, no independent pension scheme, no insurance floor, and no single body a fighter can turn to when something goes wrong."

The article noted recent calls within the fighters' community for collective representation, citing British mixed martial arts fighter Michael 'Venom' Page urging fighters earlier this month to form a union to campaign for better pay and pointing to the Muhammad Ali Act — the 2000 US law intended to protect boxers' rights — as a model he would like to see applied in MMA. It also said UFC president Dana White has been pushing to amend that Act, a development the GFA's acting general secretary Paul Maloney warned should concern fighters. "It's the one piece of legislation anywhere in the world that gives fighters a level of workplace protection, and it's currently being rewritten in a way critics say favours the promoters and networks that already hold most of the power," Maloney said. "If it can be stripped back there, it can happen anywhere else that lacks its own independent, respected voice for fighters - which is exactly why the GFA exists."

The next concrete step the GFA has set out is to raise funds to commission the inquiry: the organisation aims to collect £500,000 via a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the process that Jonathan Caplan KC will lead and for the report he will produce.