The UFC salaries

The honest to god answer is nobody knows. The UFC is a private company and there are less laws about full disclosure than in boxing so the public information we have is very sketchy.

What we know is that all fighters in the UFC are under contract to the organisation. This contract gives the UFC the right to cut them should they lose a fight. It also gives them the right to stop a fighter engaging in any other combat sports activity including pro-wrestling. This contract will also stipulate the fighter's base pay...the minium they are assure of making come what may per fight. There may also be a win bonus laid out in the contract.

The important thing to note that it is just this base pay that is included in the published figures. So for example Brock Lesnar's base pay is $400,000, which obviously sounds ridiculous low considering how big a star he is. But there are two things to say against that. One the UFC has a system where they will set aside so much of the revenue from an event to make extracontractual payments to fighters. Obviously because these don't have to be declared publiclly its a bit unclear about what's actually being paid, but it seems that most fighters are getting bonuses of at least five figures. On top of this the big stars recieve a cut of the ppv revenue through.

What both the extracontractual bonuses and the ppv points mean is that despite it being officially reported by the Commission that Lesnar earnt only $400,000 for his last fight he probably earned over $3million. As proof of the fact that fighters really do earn more than what's written down...when the UFC published Couture's pay during their dispute in 2007 he was earning significantly above the reported figures.

 

let just say it like this boxing makes more just say boxer get $5000 what does he keep alot more than a mma fighter , u got for mma jui jitsu , boxing wrestling load of **** to pay for only big names get anything like brock lesnar or chuck liddel they $500.000
and people like anderson silva and gsp get like $250.000

 

Some boxers make more. The top boxers to be precise. But because they make so much they suck the money out of the undercard fighters and so overall its far harder to earn decent money in boxing than MMA.

And actually with boxing you have to remember that out of the fighters purse they will have to pay both their promoter and their manager, and sometimes cover the cost of marketing. A fighter will only have to pay their manager - the promotional side is all handled by the UFC. I'd imagine a bigger slice gets taken out of the average top boxer's purse than the average top fighter.

As for Silva and GSP, I'd imagine both are earning no less than seven figures per fight. You may be confused by the low purse Silva is reported as having but that's because a while ago he demanded that he recieve a higher than normal cut of the ppv percentage. As a quid pro quo his base pay got cut.

 

GSP had an interview recently where he said a fighter gets a signing bonus when he signs a contract... the longer term, the bigger the bonus. He also gets a base pay for stepping into the octogon.... and then he also gets a cut of the PPV sales if he's a big star.

 

Probably only a small of handful of fighters have PPV, these guys arent the mega millionaires like boxers or any other athletes. This is why even Rampage wanted to back out of his contract and start his own promotion where the big money really occurs. The promotion gets most of the money, this is also why Fedor is set for life.