UFC 146 salaries: Headliners Dos Santos and Mir to make flat $200K paydays

[monaroCountry]

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

No one knows the full details as the UFC is so secretive. The best two examples are Couture in 2007 and Overeem in 2011. Couture earned around a million to face Sylvia and Overeen earned two million. Both way above what the commissions reported. Given that Rebney claimed the UFC had offered Lombard ppv points, I think you'd be looking at dozens of fighters having such clauses in their contract. Although these will only be activated on cersin situations.

As for other bonuses I've been led to believe by people like Meltzer that the vast majority of fighters get something even if its only an extra 10grand, but they can be a lot more. Often like with Overeem (signing bonus) or Diaz (promo work) they can be significant amount.

Only a handful of fighters have PPV, Anderson, Brock, GSP, Overeem (because of his previous management), and the PPV pullers are the only ones. JDS, Cain, Carwin and those guys dont get PPV and simply rely on the base pay and bonuses.

Overeem earned less than a million with his fight with Brock, not two. You can see this when the court garnished a portion his total earnings including PPV and bonus, Golden Glory asked for 30% and the courts awarded in their favour with around 287k (or close to that amount). Even at that time, ufc had acknowledged that Overeem was one of their highest paid fighter.

What makes this even worse is that Fedor was getting way more than this amount back in Pride. JDS and those fighters is just being scammed.

[kel]

If they don't like they know what they can do.

I'm underpaid at work, but hey, I need the job and whatever pay i can get.

[Will Cooling]

Originally Posted by monaroCountry

Only a handful of fighters have PPV, Anderson, Brock, GSP, Overeem (because of his previous management), and the PPV pullers are the only ones. JDS, Cain, Carwin and those guys dont get PPV and simply rely on the base pay and bonuses.

Overeem earned less than a million with his fight with Brock, not two. You can see this when the court garnished a portion his total earnings including PPV and bonus, Golden Glory asked for 30% and the courts awarded in their favour with around 287k (or close to that amount). Even at that time, ufc had acknowledged that Overeem was one of their highest paid fighter.

What makes this even worse is that Fedor was getting way more than this amount back in Pride. JDS and those fighters is just being scammed.

Oveereem's salary rises with how well his ppv does. UFC140 figures weren't known when golden glory got access to his details. With them he earned more than $2million. And Fertitta told ESPN that 29 fighters have such clauses in their contract.

[Will Cooling]

And to be fair, while White has had his problems with Fedor he's never discussed using gangsters to intimidate him. Which is exactly what Pride did after he fought for Inoki on NYE.

[Haggis McJackass]

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

And to be fair, while White has had his problems with Fedor he's never discussed using gangsters to intimidate him. Which is exactly what Pride did after he fought for Inoki on NYE.

Eh?

[Stoo]

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

Keeping salaries secret also has the benefit for them of reducing salary inflation for several reasons. Firstly, if everyone knows what everyone's earning then fighters are more likely to demand they earn more than X is. That's actually the reason Henderson left the UFC in 2009 - he was pissed he was being offered less than Tito Ortiz. Secondly it also makes it harder for competitors to come in and offer to pay UFC fighters more than what Zuffa does. Finally it makes it less likely that fighters are going to have to deal with people in their everyday life who know how much they earn and so seek to screw more money out of them when they come to buy stuff. These are reasons why its usually very difficult to find out precisely how much anyone in the entertainment world earns unless the sector is heavily unionised. .

I like the idea that people wont try to rip fighters off because they dont know how much they earn. God bless Zuffa

Anyway...How do you think the Muhammad Ali Act in MMA would affect Zuffa Will?

[Will Cooling]

Originally Posted by Stoo

I like the idea that people wont try to rip fighters off because they dont know how much they earn. God bless Zuffa

Anyway...How do you think the Muhammad Ali Act in MMA would affect Zuffa Will?

True but if its usually the case that if people know how much they earn then they're likely to alter their prices to suit...which of course will ultimately get passed onto Zuffa as increased wage claims. A minor concern but a somewhat legitimate one.

Personally I have no godly idea how the Muhammad Ali Act could be applied to MMA, the concept makes as much sense as applying it to WWE. The whole act has embedded within its DNA the structure of boxing - promoters, sanctioning bodies, rankings, etc. And while its certainly improved many things in boxing, many provisions aren't being properly implemented because the commissions don't have the money for enforcement.

As I've said before the way things change for the better for fighters is a fighters unions. Its what every other major sport has. People are resistant to it because there isn't one in boxing because like anything in boxing it'd be a complete political cluster****, but that's what we need.

[Will Cooling]

Originally Posted by Haggis McJackass

Eh?

When Fedor Emelianenko signed with Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye for NYE in 2003 it led to death threats towards his then management. When his management squealed it (amongst other things) set in train the events that would lead to the exposure of Pride's links with the Yakuza

[Ne5ville14]

Yeaaahh....more union !!!

U.S. won't tolerate this... !

[Will Cooling]

Originally Posted by Ne5ville14

Yeaaahh....more union !!!

U.S. won't tolerate this... !

Except in baseball, football, basketball...

American sports are oddly more socialistic in their organisation than European ones.

[Ne5ville14]

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

Except in baseball, football, basketball...

American sports are oddly more socialistic in their organisation than European ones.

That I didn't know...U.S.A. is a ****in weird country....

It's ok for millionaire to be in a union...but police, fireman etc can all go **** themselves !!

[Stoo]

Yeah I had no idea how it would work either, thought Id ask your opinion. The Station v Food Union has opened up a can of worms though I think

I think aspects of the Ali act would be the way to go, i.e. full disclosure on back room bonus', which will hopefully lead to standardisation on things like base pay PPV cut's for Champions. For a very rough example, $500000 base and in your 1st defence you get $1 on every PPV sold over 400000, $1.50 on every PPV over 500000 and so on, how ever they want to work it. The more you draw the more you get paid, but all Champs should get the same deal, if they dont all ready

But it's hard to justify giving someone a bonus for a kod/sub good fight ect (not including the fight/sub/kod of the night bonus' already disclosed) without opening the door for other fighters to be knocking on Dana's door. if for exapmles across the board they went public and said if you finish the fight early, you get a 20% bonus on top of your purse.

It seems only fighters coming from outside of the Zuffa umbrella having already been established else where are really getting a fair shake, as Ive already mentioned. This prolonged lack of transparency is worrying, and it creates situations where fans like Beouche automatically think they have something to hide. id like to know how much they are charging Brands to sponsor fighters as well, which is another rumoured practice

I would love to see some sort of Union to avoid a repeat of the John Fitch image rights fiasco which I think was a disgrace. But that problem was averted by the acquisition of SF and signed the best draws, virtually killing EA Games MMA foray in the process. But of course, Unions over the years in most fields of work are very susceptible to corruption and deals via backhanders that will not suit the fighters interests.

As you say the thought of a boxing Union is truly laughable. But corruption seems to be par for the course in combat sports

[Will Cooling]

Again its very difficult to say because extending the Act to UFC would be so goofy but I'm not sure the impact would be that dramatic - its after all not as if boxing paydays are any more transparent than UFC ones. You look at most big fights, while the numbers are bigger than UFC main events there's the same vagueness about what amount the fighters will ultimately get. And the Ali act doesn't create the type of level playing field for contracts that you describe there - it was much more about protecting freedom of labour movement and stopping fighters being signed to one-sided (as opposed to unlucrative) contracts.

I've also though the big danger to Zuffa from Ali would be that it would destroy the champions clause that's in everyone's contract (that if there champion their contract rolls over until they lose the belt), without which they would have less leverage when it came to negotiating with longstanding champions. So its possible to see a situation where the UFC has to overpay to stop a champion leaving rather than having the nuclear option of enforcing the champions' clause. Other than that, it may weaken their contracts but the likes of Top Rank and Golden Boy seem to have no problem locking down fighters for prolonged periods.

The other thing to bear in mind is that much of the relevant passages of the Ali Act and its predecessor Professional Boxing Safety Act do actually indirectly apply to UFC because when commissions started to sanction UFC in the early noughties they brought across the best practice it enshrined for boxing. So things like promoters having to post bonds, mandatory suspensions for injured fighters, minimum medical standards, purses being published by commissions, etc are already in place.

Making sponsors pay before they can sponsor fighters absolutely does happen with the fee charged going as high as $100,000 although White says its means tested based on the size of the event and the size of the sponsor.

To me the thing with boxing is that anyone given any power has always ****ed up in that sport, so the sport has decided to give nobody any power. I don't think the UFC has ****ed up - they just need to be held accountable. Therefore a players union with the type of profit-sharing and collective-bargaining provisions that most American sports seems like the way to go.

[Will Cooling]

Originally Posted by Ne5ville14

That I didn't know...U.S.A. is a ****in weird country....

It's ok for millionaire to be in a union...but police, fireman etc can all go **** themselves !!

The thing in most of those sports the players had the threat of crying foul to the authorities over monopolistic practices. The UFC structure makes it much less plausible to cry monopoly and in any case American jurisprudence is far more favourable to corporate interests now than it was when these unions were formed.

[Stoo]

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

Again its very difficult to say because extending the Act to UFC would be so goofy but I'm not sure the impact would be that dramatic - its after all not as if boxing paydays are any more transparent than UFC ones. You look at most big fights, while the numbers are bigger than UFC main events there's the same vagueness about what amount the fighters will ultimately get. And the Ali act doesn't create the type of level playing field for contracts that you describe there - it was much more about protecting freedom of labour movement and stopping fighters being signed to one-sided (as opposed to unlucrative) contracts.

As I said, the Act would never work in MMAif taken verbatim , Im just wondering if it would be in Zuffa's best interest to have a solid and publicly known wage structure so to speak. This was used as a stick to beat them with during the ESPN ''expose'' and it's of course being used in this thread

Take the Carwin got $20000 malarky. He probably made it decent wedge. But for example, if they made it a guaranteed $200 000 for arguments sake, to every contender, then that would do a lot for this area of PR where they are vulnerable. If they are earning a good payday, say so, it all seems very shady otherwise, even if the fighters are indeed content with their earnings

Guys like Overeem making more than that without challenging for the belt will slowly become a thing of the past anyway as they, frankly, have no where else to go now. The majority of new talent coming up the ranks in the next 10 years, will be coming up through the UFC.

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

I've also though the big danger to Zuffa from Ali would be that it would destroy the champions clause that's in everyone's contract (that if there champion their contract rolls over until they lose the belt), without which they would have less leverage when it came to negotiating with longstanding champions. So its possible to see a situation where the UFC has to overpay to stop a champion leaving rather than having the nuclear option of enforcing the champions' clause. Other than that, it may weaken their contracts but the likes of Top Rank and Golden Boy seem to have no problem locking down fighters for prolonged periods.

Now this is one of the strongest aspects of Zuffa's business plan, I do agree with the Clause as they cant afford to have a Flair-esque ''real world champion'' scenario which hurt WCW's credibility for a few years. Hell, I dont even need to use that example, look at the Randy situation.

Again though the only thing that's worrying is that the reverse may be true, the UFC holding up the Champ when he has a better offer. They already by signing give away their image rights for video games, and what have you, seems to me like corporate rape. Again transparency would alleviate this issue in my opinion. But I doubt most fans even ponder this stuff

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

Making sponsors pay before they can sponsor fighters absolutely does happen with the fee charged going as high as $100,000 although White says its means tested based on the size of the event and the size of the sponsor. .

Again...slightly rapey...doubt the UFC pay the guys in the Cage everytime Goldberg breaks commentary to publicise the latest Nic Cage shit fest. I always chuckle when this issue comes up in threads and we get the old ''They are getting sponsored...'' I dont even bother to respond because if you've read 1 posts on a subject you dont need to read another, usually the same old shit

Originally Posted by Will Cooling

To me the thing with boxing is that anyone given any power has always ****ed up in that sport, so the sport has decided to give nobody any power. I don't think the UFC has ****ed up - they just need to be held accountable. Therefore a players union with the type of profit-sharing and collective-bargaining provisions that most American sports seems like the way to go.

I really do like the idea, but I don't see it happening for a multitude of reasons. And it may give the Mafia a foot in the door (insert your own Frank Fertitta Jr jokes here fellas, I've written enough for one post)

Anyway dont expect you to respond to all that. But do you see the Bellator/Viacom deal changing things? It's a pretty big deal that hasnt been given much play here