UFC fighter Taila Santos has been accused by two former coaches and a manager of not paying her for her last three UFC fights, including a 125lb title fight with Valentina Shevchenko, but Santos denies the allegations.
The local news agency “O Município de Blumenau” first reported on the situation.
Former Santos head coach and manager Marcelo Brigadeiro claims Santos failed to fulfill his contract after parting ways with his gym over a year ago, including failing to pay his percentage for their fights with Roxanne Modafferi, Joanne Wood and Shevchenko. Brigadeiro told MMA Fighting that he will be filing a lawsuit in the coming weeks.
Marcio Malko, who coached Santos for those three competitions, has already filed a lawsuit. MMA Fighting received the suit, with Malko stating the UFC flyweight paid him for Modafferi and Wood training camps, but refused to pay after he challenged Shevchenko for the title in Singapore in June. According to the lawsuit, Malko is seeking 20 percent of her UFC 275 salary ($150,000 lump sum and $32,000 Athlete Outfitting Policy) for a total of $36,400.
Patricio Barbosa Farias, a brown belt in jiu-jitsu and the brother of Santos’ husband and trainer Pedro Barbosa Farias, told MMA Fighting that he was left with a R$15,000 ($2,935) debt after signing a verbal agreement to tell her to train, had not fulfilled after leaving Malko’s team.
Patricio told MMA Fighting he had no money to pay a lawyer to seek justice, but he filed a police embezzlement report against his brother and the UFC fighter on Aug. 5. In the police report, obtained by MMA Fighting, Farias said he was invited to coach Santos and earn 3% of their upcoming purses and eventual sponsorship deals, plus an expense reimbursement after moving to another city, but was not paid after three months.
Santos released a statement on the situation to MMA Fighting. Regarding Brigadeiro’s allegations, Santos said they were in the process of splitting up what she called an “abusive” deal. Santos filed a lawsuit against Brigadeiro, a then-member of MTK Global. MMA Fighting received the lawsuit filed in December 2021, in which Santos claims she “couldn’t even read [the contract] or keep copies of it”, and could not understand how “abusive and illegal the terms of the contract were” as she did not have proper training. Santos accuses Brigadeiro of trying to book her against another athlete he managed in the UFC in 2021 and turning down a replacement without her knowledge. Santos claims R$24,724 ($4,820) in her lawsuit.
Brigadeiro told MMA Fighting that “the situation was very disappointing for me” because “I’ve been with her since her second professional fight. She lived in my house for more than two years, I treated her like a daughter and I was very upset about it. But we had a contract and it wasn’t kept, and now we’re going to decide in court who’s right and who’s wrong. I have nothing against them but I’ve always been very professional with everyone I’ve dealt with and I hope people are [professional] with me.”
Regarding Malko’s lawsuit, Santos said she disagreed with the amount the manager was asking for, claiming they didn’t even have a signed contract, saying it would be proven in court. In the case of her brother-in-law, Santos called his statements “false allegations”.
Santos said her husband decided to help his brother, who was unemployed and worked as an Uber driver in another city, and offered him the opportunity to work as a jiu-jitsu instructor. Farias also helped build their new training center and was paid to do so, Santos said, but was demoted from his job as a jiu-jitsu coach after disagreements with another team member, leading to “great personal instability.” Farias told MMA Fighting he was paid for the construction work, but only for that.
Malko released a statement to MMA Fighting saying, “We set out a career plan for her where I promised her we would get to a title fight within four fights or two years, but Taila was already in the octagon and fought best flyweight in the world after two fights, 12 months total. … I still haven’t received the agreed amount for my services. The only thing she did after the fight was send me a letter acknowledging how much she owed me but wouldn’t keep her end of the deal.”
The 297-page lawsuit filed by Malko includes a letter he attributes to Santos and her team in which they allegedly called their deal “abusive” and said she was persuaded to agree because she was in an “unstable financial situation.” “ Instead of the $36,400 Malko asked for, Santos reportedly offered to pay $5,200.