Mark Hunt Lawsuit: How the Courts Ruled and Why It Failed

Mark Hunt’s lawsuit against the UFC ended in April 2025 when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of every remaining claim, closing an eight-year fight over Brock Lesnar’s doping at UFC 200 without any recovery for Hunt. The appellate panel ruled that Hunt had not produced evidence of actual damages, an essential element of the fraud and battery claims he was still pursuing.¹

What Hunt Was Suing Over

On July 9, 2016, Brock Lesnar came out of a five-year retirement to face Hunt on the main card of UFC 200 in Las Vegas and won by unanimous decision. Days later, it emerged that Lesnar had tested positive for clomiphene, an anti-estrogen drug, in an out-of-competition sample collected June 28, 2016, and again in his fight-night sample.²³ The Nevada State Athletic Commission later suspended Lesnar for a year, fined him $250,000, and overturned the win to a no-contest.⁴

Hunt’s grievance centered on the UFC’s decision to waive the standard four-month testing-pool enrollment period for Lesnar. Because Lesnar had retired before the UFC’s USADA partnership existed and was signed to fight Hunt only about a month before UFC 200, the promotion granted him an exemption.⁵ Hunt believed the shortened window let Lesnar dodge the extended pre-fight testing that could have flagged his drug use in time to cancel the bout.

The Claims Hunt Brought in 2017

Hunt filed his complaint in January 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, case number 2:17-cv-00085-JAD-VCF. He named Zuffa, LLC, UFC president Dana White, and Brock Lesnar as defendants.⁶ The complaint asserted racketeering under the federal RICO statute, fraud, battery, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy.

His theory: UFC officials knew Lesnar was using performance-enhancing drugs and manipulated their own testing rules to protect a pay-per-view draw. Hunt claimed physical injury, reputational damage, lost title-contention opportunities, and diminished future earnings.⁷

How the Courts Ruled

The First Dismissal

U.S. District Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey dismissed almost the entire case on February 14, 2019. All claims against White and Lesnar were dismissed, along with all but one claim against the UFC, with prejudice. Dorsey found Hunt’s damages theory, that he would have won a clean fight, to be “highly speculative” and insufficient to show the alleged RICO violations and fraud “proximately caused Hunt’s financial losses.”⁸ The lone surviving good-faith-and-fair-dealing claim was itself dismissed in November 2019.⁹

The 2021 Partial Reversal

On September 24, 2021, a Ninth Circuit panel revived Hunt’s fraud, battery, aiding-and-abetting battery, and civil conspiracy claims. The RICO, breach-of-contract, unjust-enrichment, and implied-covenant dismissals stayed in place.¹⁰

The appellate court accepted an alternative fraud theory: not that Hunt would have won a clean fight, but that he would have refused to take the fight at all had he known about Lesnar’s drug use. That theory, the court said, was “far more susceptible to proof.” On battery, the court rejected the argument that MMA fighters implicitly consent to fighting doped opponents as an inherent risk of the sport, pointing out that no factual finding established “doping is within the normal scope of organized MMA activity.”¹⁰

Summary Judgment and the 2025 Affirmance

Back before Judge Dorsey, the UFC moved for summary judgment on the revived claims and won. Dorsey found no evidence that Dana White had lied to Hunt or given any “assurances” that Lesnar was clean.⁷

Hunt appealed a second time. On April 22, 2025, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel affirmed in a memorandum opinion, focusing on damages rather than the deception issue Dorsey had emphasized. Because damages are an essential element of both fraud and battery, and because Hunt “does not point to any evidence in the record of any physical, emotional, economic, or reputational damage or harm attributable to Defendants-Appellees’ conduct,” the claims could not survive.¹ The court noted that Hunt himself acknowledged, in his reply brief and at oral argument, that evidence of damages had not been “adequately presented.”⁷

Why the Case Failed

The lawsuit collapsed for stacked reasons that show how hard it is to convert a doping grievance into a civil recovery, even when the underlying positive tests are undisputed.

The original damages theory was too speculative. Guessing how a clean fight would have ended could not sustain the fraud claim, and the district court rejected it in 2019.
The revived “withdrawal” theory needed evidence of concrete harm, and Hunt never supplied it. The 2025 panel found no record proof of physical, emotional, economic, or reputational damage tied to the defendants’ conduct.
Hunt could not show Dana White had affirmatively misled him or promised that Lesnar was clean.
The RICO claim failed early because Hunt did not allege the supposed enterprise members “functioned as a unit” rather than a loose collection of individuals, and it was never revived.

What the Loss Cost Hunt

The UFC invoked a prevailing-party clause in Hunt’s 2016 Promotional and Ancillary Rights Agreement and sought its legal costs. Judge Dorsey granted the request in March 2021, awarding $301,792.50 in attorney fees and $86,442.72 in costs, a total of $388,235.22.⁶ A later ruling in March 2024 adjusted the award downward after the court questioned why the UFC had demanded significantly more per expert witness than the law allowed.¹¹

A Separate UFC Case That Isn’t This One

Hunt’s suit should not be confused with the class-action antitrust case Le et al. v. Zuffa, LLC, which reached a $375 million settlement approved on February 6, 2025 and paid out in September 2025. That settlement covered fighters who competed in UFC bouts in the United States between December 16, 2010, and June 30, 2017. Hunt fought during that window and would appear to fall within the class definition, though the settlement documentation does not specifically name him.¹²¹³ That case is unrelated to the doping claims Hunt lost.

1
Justia. Hunt v. Zuffa LLC, No. 23-3113
2
USADA. Brock Lesnar Receives Doping Sanction
3
The Guardian. Brock Lesnar Sanctioned for Failing UFC Drugs Test
4
Los Angeles Times. Brock Lesnar Suspended and Fined by UFC for Failed Drug Tests
5
MMA Fighting. Mark Hunt Responds to Critics Who Say He Knew Brock Lesnar Was Doping Before UFC 200
6
FindLaw. Hunt v. Zuffa, LLC
7
Courthouse News Service. Fighter’s Lawsuit Against UFC Over Doping Claims KO’d Again by Ninth Circuit
8
ESPN. Judge Dismisses Most of Mark Hunt Case vs. UFC, Brock Lesnar
9
MMA Fighting. Mark Hunt Explodes After Judge Dismissed Remainder of Lawsuit Against UFC, Dana White, and Brock Lesnar
10
Justia. Hunt v. Zuffa, LLC, No. 19-17529
11
Cageside Press. Mark Hunt Gives Update on Lawsuit Against UFC
12
Cohen Milstein. Mixed Martial Arts Antitrust Litigation
13
Yahoo Sports. UFC Fighters Are Finally Getting Their Money: Antitrust Payouts Explained