It has long been rumored and commented on by UFC fighters that money, or lack thereof is an issue in the UFC.
Dana White, UFC President has defended the monetary issues and feels that fighters get paid according to their performance and draw power.
Taking to Twitter, Andreas Hale, senior editor of ‘Combat Sports’ commented:
The TOTAL combined payout for every fighter #UFC270 was $1.8 million.
Fury made $30 million in his third fight against Wilder.
Wilder made $20 million.
Fury and Wilder made 25x more than all the UFC 270 fighters COMBINED.
Tell me that UFC fighter pay isn’t an issue. pic.twitter.com/xYXxXLGvX8
— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) January 23, 2022
“The TOTAL combined payout for every fighter #UFC 270 was $1.8 million. Fury made $30 million in his third fight against Wilder. Wilder made $20 million. Fury and Wilder made 25x more than all the UFC 270 fighters COMBINED. Tell me that UFC fighter pay isn’t an issue.”
In response to Hale’s comments, there have been a number of tweets indicating that the UFC should do better. Yet, there are other comments citing if fighters aren’t happy with their paycheck then why are they doing it.
Although it should be noted that several fighters have come forward with concerns over paychecks and contract negotiations including Francis Ngannou, Jon Jones and Jake Paul, just to name a few, who have been pushing for UFC fighters to get better remuneration.
Back in July of 2021 Dana White, when responding to critics citing unfair UFC fighter pay he commented:
“The reality is anybody who’s being critical outside of the fighters themselves don’t know anything anyway,” White said in an interview with journalist Manouk Akopyan. “They don’t actually know what these guys are making. And the fighters don’t ever come out and tell you.”
“There’s no gag order on any of these guys. These guys can come out at any time and tell you what they’re making. I have no problem with that. But they don’t, do they? No, they do not. So it’s sort of a Catch-22.”
“Fighter pay has continually gone up every year since we owned the business. Obviously, there’s been tons more opportunities with the outfitting policy, some of the sponsors that we’ve brought in that spend tons of money with the fighters too.”
“There’s a lot of opportunity here for the fighters. And listen, there’s never gonna be a guy that’s coming out and saying, ‘Yeah, they’re paying me too much. They’re overpaying me. And all of these guys that are champions share in the pay-per-view revenue.”
“Listen, if you don’t like it, go start your own MMA league and pay ‘em whatever you want to pay ‘em. This is mine and this is the way we’re doing it.”
Yet six months later, the issue of fighter pay is still in the headlines, and is seemingly not going away anytime soon.