The Reebok deal serves to highlight the powerlessness of fighters over their contracts with the ufc (although I'm sure there are plenty of positives). What PR, legal or other strategies could fighters adopt to get out and work elsewhere? I'm not a ufc basher but I find it highly disturbing the balance of power is so heavily in their favour. In soccer there are legal precedents preventing clubs from affecting players livelihoods, for example. That's a sport where generally even 3rd tier athletes have big pay packets. Wandy however is basically forced to literally fight his way of his contract to be able to help promote rival companies. Take the point Sandy is hardly suffering compared to most guys. 
Galanis -
Who is Sandy?
Spell check got him on Wandy, happens to me all the time haha
Sandy vagina, she posts here
Fighters can try to change the contract before signing it. Will the UFC allow them to change the contract?--If they are GSP, Anderson, Brock...I am sure there is a chance. Otherwise, be happy you are employed and have other employment options when the contract runs out/ get fired.
Sandy fucked himself. Fact. 
Wandy is Sandy these days..
Thanks Nate for answering my question!
Sanderlei Wulva
Fuck his way out imo
lol @ Sandy.
GongandDash - The Reebok deal serves to highlight the powerlessness of fighters over their contracts with the ufc (although I'm sure there are plenty of positives). What PR, legal or other strategies could fighters adopt to get out and work elsewhere? I'm not a ufc basher but I find it highly disturbing the balance of power is so heavily in their favour. In soccer there are legal precedents preventing clubs from affecting players livelihoods, for example. That's a sport where generally even 3rd tier athletes have big pay packets. Wandy however is basically forced to literally fight his way of his contract to be able to help promote rival companies. Take the point Sandy is hardly suffering compared to most guys.
Soccer has been around since 1863
NFL was established around 1920
First MLB team established 1869
Boxing in the form of an Olympic Sport=688 B.C
The first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in
England appeared in 1681.
Marquess of Queensberry (again,Boxng) rules was established in 1867.
Vale Tudo has been around in some form or another since 1920
The first documented, regulated MMA (Tough Guy Fights) 1980
UFC debuted in 1993.
UFC in its current iteration has only been around since 2001
That's a lot of history behind everyone of those sports listed above, other than the current version of UFC. Give it time to grow, expand, get its foothold around the rest of the world and then lets revisit this whole fighter pay thing again in another 15-20 years and then we'll see how well its improved or degraded. It's still a bit early to get up in arms over fighter pay. In the past 8 years fighter pay has improved drastically. People were complaining about hundreds of dollars in fighter pay just a few short years ago. Now it's thousands of dollars in fighter pay.
They COULD go the route of boxing and pay the top star(s) hundreds of millions and hand ALL the undercard fighters peanuts. In doing so, they'll create an environment where those tops fighters getting paid hundreds of millions guaranteed will only fight defensively and won't engage in order to preserve their paycheck and ensure their record stays in tact. They could go that way. I don't think anyone here wants that.
And Wand made his bed. He can just as easily just have made nice, admitted what he did was wrong, apologized to UFC/AC and his fans, and people would stand with him until his ban is lifted. The best he can hope for now is a reduction, which will probably be lowered to just 3-5 years. That puts him out of competition forever still, so nothing changes. Sure he can fight to get out of his contract, but the UFC has very competent and savvy and ruthless lawyers if you wants to go that route. That's the only two options he has. The first one at least lets him save whats left of his dignity and attempt to salvage and preserve a bit of his legacy.
And if I recall correctly, he was calling Dana and Lorenzo "Boss", in the good sense, before the drug test fiasco. He was content to fight just once a year. They used him for the big shows and gave him beatable fighters. IF that's mistreatment, then they mistreat all their fighters. That's what so absurd about this whole situation. Everything was kosher before he ran. UFC even helped to fund his gym if I'm correct, I may be wrong on that, but I'm almost sure they funded his gym in some part.
As sad as it is, and I'm as huge of a fan of Wanderlei as the next person, but he did this to himself and has no one to blame but himself. Anyone who says otherwise is just delusional and being the typical biased Zuffa hater (God I hate that word)