DOGGx0
06-24-2004, 07:36 PM
Inside MMA: UFC 48 Fighter Salaries with In-Depth Analysis
by Ivan Trembow from MMA Weekly (www.mmaweekly.com)
UFC 48 Fighter Salaries
-Ken Shamrock: $170,000 ($120,000 for fighting; $50,000 win bonus)
-Matt Hughes: $110,000 ($55,000 for fighting; $55,000 win bonus)
-Frank Mir: $90,000 ($60,000 for fighting; $30,000 win bonus)
-Kimo: $55,000 ($55,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $0)
-Tim Sylvia: $40,000 ($40,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $40,000)
-Evan Tanner: $30,000 ($15,000 for fighting; $15,000 win bonus)
-Phil Baroni: $20,000 ($20,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $20,000)
-Frank Trigg: $20,000 ($10,000 for fighting; $10,000 win bonus)
-Matt Serra: $16,000 ($8,000 for fighting; $8,000 win bonus)
-Renato Verissimo: $10,000 ($10,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $10,000)
-Georges St. Pierre: $8,000 ($4,000 for fighting; $4,000 win bonus)
-Trevor Prangley: $5,000 ($2,500 for fighting; $2,500 win bonus)
-Dennis Hallman: $4,000 ($4,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $4,000)
-Curtis Stout: $3,000 ($3,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $3,000)
-Jay Hieron: $3,000 ($3,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $3,000)
-Ivan Menjivar: $2,000 ($2,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $2,000)
Total Fighter Payroll: $586,000
Comparative Notes on Total Fighter Payroll UFC 46: $540,500
UFC 47: $333,000
UFC 48: $586,000
Comparative Notes on Number of Fighters Making $10,000 or More
UFC 46: 8 out of 16 fighters made $10,000 or more
UFC 47: 6 out of 16 fighters made $10,000 or more
UFC 48: 10 out of 16 fighters made $10,000 or more
Commentary and Analysis on UFC 48 Salaries
by Ivan Trembow from MMA Weekly (www.mmaweekly.com)
-The overall fighter payroll increased dramatically from UFC 47 to UFC 48, as did the parity of the contracts. A whopping ten of the sixteen fighters who competed on the card made $10,000 or more, which has not been the case since the early days of Zuffa owning the UFC. Only fighters who are relative newcomers to the UFC took home less than $10,000 for their fights at this event, and you can't always say that about any given UFC event.
-Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz have almost identical UFC contracts when it comes to the bottom line financially. Ortiz makes $125,000 for fighting and another $50,000 if he wins, while Shamrock makes $120,000 for fighting and another $50,000 if he wins.
-Matt Hughes' contract of $55,000 to fight and another $55,000 for winning is huge for a fighter of his weight, but it's hard to argue that Hughes isn't worth every penny given the fact that Hughes was one of the most dominant champions in UFC history in any weight class. With BJ Penn unwilling to give Hughes a rematch and choosing to sign with K-1 instead, it seems likely that the now-vacant UFC Welterweight Title will be decided in a fight between Matt Hughes and an opponent to be determined. The list of possible suspects includes Frank Trigg, Georges St. Pierre, and the winner of the Nick Diaz vs. Karo Parisyan fight.
-Frank Mir is still making the same amount of money that he has made for his last several UFC fights--- $60,000 for fighting and another $30,000 if he wins. That was considered by many fans to be an inflated salary for "a non-champion who has never really proven himself," which is what many fans thought of Mir before his decisive victory over Tim Sylvia. However, now that Mir is the bona-fide, 100% legitimate UFC Heavyweight Champion, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a pay raise in the future. This has to be considered even more likely when you consider the huge level of international demand for heavyweight fighters from companies like K-1 and Pride who have much deeper pockets than the UFC. While any light-heavyweight or heavyweight fighter in the UFC is an attractive target for K-1 and Pride, Mir won't be going anywhere in the near future. He has more fights remaining on his UFC contract, and even if he didn't, all contracts for UFC title fights now state that the winner will be exclusive to the UFC for a period of one year after winning the title.
-Kimo's gauranteed contract, which paid him $55,000 to fight and had no win bonus, is not the norm in the UFC but is not all that unusual, either. Several other fighters have had similar contracts in the past (with no win bonus), including Carlos Newton, who always fights with that kind of contract when he fights in the UFC.
-It was expected that Tim Sylvia might have to take a pay cut after coming back from his steroid scandal, but the opposite is true. This is due to the fact that Sylvia is in the middle of a five-fight contract that appears to pay him slightly more with each passing fight. Sylvia's most recent fight prior to UFC 48 saw Sylvia make $30,000 for fighting and another $30,000 for winning. Sylvia's fight at UFC 48 saw him make $40,000 for fighting, and he would have made an additional $40,000 if he had been victorious.
-If you want to talk about fighters who might have had to play a little bit of hardball to get their current deals (based on the current UFC pay landscape), the three names that would come to mind would be Evan Tanner, Frank Trigg, and Renato Verissimo.
-In Renato Verissimo's case, it is extremely unusual for any fighter in only his second UFC fight to have a contract that pays him $10,000 to fight and another $10,000 if he wins. Even Robbie Lawler doesn't make that kind of money, and he is one of the UFC's "poster boys." Then again, when your first UFC fight is such a thorough and impressive domination of a fighter like Carlos Newton, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Verissimo got this much of a pay raise for his second UFC fight. (Verissimo's first UFC fight paid him $5,000 to fight and another $5,000 to win.)
-Frank Trigg pulled off the slightly more impressive feat of getting a two-fight contract with the UFC wherein both fights would pay him $10,000 to fight and another $10,000 to win. (The UFC 45 fight with Matt Hughes was the first fight on Trigg's contract, and the UFC 48 fight with Dennis Hallman was the second.) Trigg likely got that kind of deal by sitting out so long and turning down several offers for less money, and actually making it seem like it was a step down for him to make $10,000 and $10,000. While that's considered a lot of money on the UFC pay scale due to the fact that Trigg is "just a welterweight," it really shouldn't be that way in my opinion. Trigg came in as a big-name free agent signing who was going to fight for the title at his weight class. To do so for any less than $10,000 and $10,000 would only skew the pay scale of the whole 170-pound weight class downward.
-I was also somewhat surprised to see that Evan Tanner's contract for UFC 48 paid him $15,000 to fight and another $15,000 to win. That might not seem like a lot of money, but it's fairly high up on the UFC pay scale for non-main-eventers, and is only slightly smaller than the contract that Baroni himself came into UFC 48 with. The reason it was surprising for me to see Tanner making that much money is not because he doesn't deserve it; I just wouldn't expect that kind of money to be going to someone whose only fights in the UFC over the previous two years consisted of getting TKO'ed by Rich Franklin and scoring a controversial victory over Phil Baroni. It was a risky investment for Zuffa to pay Tanner that much for his UFC 48 bout with Baroni when it was considered a strong possibility that Tanner would be knocked out and might then be gone from the UFC for a long time. Fortunately, Tanner made Zuffa's investment in him more than worth it with his impressive performance at UFC 48.
-One of the reasons that Phil Baroni has gotten the treatment he has gotten from the UFC is that he is a big name from New York, and the UFC's pay-per-view buy rates have always been noticeably lower on the East Coast than on the West Coast. The line of thinking is that if a marketable fighter from a big East Coast city such as New York were to do well in the UFC and blossom into a championship-caliber fighter, it could boost buy-rates on the East Coast. So, given that some people within Zuffa consider Phil Baroni to be one of the company's top draws, I would actually consider his UFC 48 contract of $20,000 to fight and another $20,000 if he wins to be a little lower than I expected. One could easily argue that Baroni is lucky to be employed at all given the fact that he intentionally struck an official in the face several times, but if you're going to employ him and you consider him one of your top draws, I would expect to see him making more than $20,000 to fight and $20,000 more to win.
However, now that Baroni is 3-4 in the UFC, even casual fans have caught on to the fact that Baroni is more about marketing than actual fighting. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but you have to be considered "more about marketing than actual fighting" when anyone else with your record would have been long-gone from the UFC by now. New fans who have started watching the UFC since September of 2002 have never seen Baroni win a fight on pay-per-view. It would be a major blow to the UFC's credibility if Phil Baroni, or any other fighter on a three-fight losing streak, would continue to the fight in the UFC with no explanation or sense of consistency, as if he's not on a three-fight losing streak.
While Phil Baroni is obviously a much higher-caliber athlete than Tank Abbott, the comparison has to be made to Tank Abbott's 2003 Death March through the UFC, which was an embarrassment to the sport and turned off even casual fans by the end. If it's just about getting fighters with a marketable look who can cut pro wrestling-style promos, there are any number of (non-WWE) pro wrestlers that the UFC could sign who could, A) Have a marketable look, B) Cut pro wrestling-style promos, and C) Maintain a losing record in the UFC. Given all of these facts, I would consider it to be a huge gift to Phil Baroni if he fights again in the UFC for any amount of money (much less for $20,000 and $20,000) without having to prove himself on smaller shows like anyone else would have to.
Making it Big in the UFC
Not all fighters make $10,000 or more for competing in the UFC. In fact, on most UFC events the majority of the fighters make less than $10,000. The six fighters on this event who were gauranteed to take home less than $10,000 were Georges St. Pierre, Trevor Prangley, Dennis Hallman, Curtis Stout, Jay Hieron, and Ivan Menjivar. This is consistent with the salary structure in the UFC for fighters who are not considered "big stars" and are not long-time UFC veterans.
If you're not considered an already established big star coming in, it's almost certain that your first one, two, or three UFC fights are going to pay you $2,000 to $4,000 to fight, and another $2,000 to $4,000 if you win. Even Lee Murray, with all of the hype around his debut at UFC 46, only made $3,000 and $3,000. This relatively small paycheck is acceptable for fighters who simply love to fight and don't care about the money, but even these fighters have to have "bigger paydays down the road" as a topic in the back of their mind.
What's so risky for fighters coming up through the ranks in the UFC is the fact that there is so little room for error. Looking at UFC newcomers since the first Zuffa-run UFC event in early 2001, the trend is clear: Lose one fight, and there is a very strong possibility that you're out of the UFC for the forseeable future. Lose two fights, and you're almost certainly out. There is often no second chance, and hardly ever a third chance, for a young hopeful just starting out in the UFC making a few thousand dollars per fight. For aspiring mixed martial artists, the task of getting to the UFC is not the big payoff at the end of the rainbow in and of itself. It's only after you succeed in the UFC on multiple occasions that you can begin the dream job of doing something you love for a living and getting paid good money to do it.
by Ivan Trembow from MMA Weekly (www.mmaweekly.com)
UFC 48 Fighter Salaries
-Ken Shamrock: $170,000 ($120,000 for fighting; $50,000 win bonus)
-Matt Hughes: $110,000 ($55,000 for fighting; $55,000 win bonus)
-Frank Mir: $90,000 ($60,000 for fighting; $30,000 win bonus)
-Kimo: $55,000 ($55,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $0)
-Tim Sylvia: $40,000 ($40,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $40,000)
-Evan Tanner: $30,000 ($15,000 for fighting; $15,000 win bonus)
-Phil Baroni: $20,000 ($20,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $20,000)
-Frank Trigg: $20,000 ($10,000 for fighting; $10,000 win bonus)
-Matt Serra: $16,000 ($8,000 for fighting; $8,000 win bonus)
-Renato Verissimo: $10,000 ($10,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $10,000)
-Georges St. Pierre: $8,000 ($4,000 for fighting; $4,000 win bonus)
-Trevor Prangley: $5,000 ($2,500 for fighting; $2,500 win bonus)
-Dennis Hallman: $4,000 ($4,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $4,000)
-Curtis Stout: $3,000 ($3,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $3,000)
-Jay Hieron: $3,000 ($3,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $3,000)
-Ivan Menjivar: $2,000 ($2,000 for fighting; win bonus would have been $2,000)
Total Fighter Payroll: $586,000
Comparative Notes on Total Fighter Payroll UFC 46: $540,500
UFC 47: $333,000
UFC 48: $586,000
Comparative Notes on Number of Fighters Making $10,000 or More
UFC 46: 8 out of 16 fighters made $10,000 or more
UFC 47: 6 out of 16 fighters made $10,000 or more
UFC 48: 10 out of 16 fighters made $10,000 or more
Commentary and Analysis on UFC 48 Salaries
by Ivan Trembow from MMA Weekly (www.mmaweekly.com)
-The overall fighter payroll increased dramatically from UFC 47 to UFC 48, as did the parity of the contracts. A whopping ten of the sixteen fighters who competed on the card made $10,000 or more, which has not been the case since the early days of Zuffa owning the UFC. Only fighters who are relative newcomers to the UFC took home less than $10,000 for their fights at this event, and you can't always say that about any given UFC event.
-Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz have almost identical UFC contracts when it comes to the bottom line financially. Ortiz makes $125,000 for fighting and another $50,000 if he wins, while Shamrock makes $120,000 for fighting and another $50,000 if he wins.
-Matt Hughes' contract of $55,000 to fight and another $55,000 for winning is huge for a fighter of his weight, but it's hard to argue that Hughes isn't worth every penny given the fact that Hughes was one of the most dominant champions in UFC history in any weight class. With BJ Penn unwilling to give Hughes a rematch and choosing to sign with K-1 instead, it seems likely that the now-vacant UFC Welterweight Title will be decided in a fight between Matt Hughes and an opponent to be determined. The list of possible suspects includes Frank Trigg, Georges St. Pierre, and the winner of the Nick Diaz vs. Karo Parisyan fight.
-Frank Mir is still making the same amount of money that he has made for his last several UFC fights--- $60,000 for fighting and another $30,000 if he wins. That was considered by many fans to be an inflated salary for "a non-champion who has never really proven himself," which is what many fans thought of Mir before his decisive victory over Tim Sylvia. However, now that Mir is the bona-fide, 100% legitimate UFC Heavyweight Champion, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a pay raise in the future. This has to be considered even more likely when you consider the huge level of international demand for heavyweight fighters from companies like K-1 and Pride who have much deeper pockets than the UFC. While any light-heavyweight or heavyweight fighter in the UFC is an attractive target for K-1 and Pride, Mir won't be going anywhere in the near future. He has more fights remaining on his UFC contract, and even if he didn't, all contracts for UFC title fights now state that the winner will be exclusive to the UFC for a period of one year after winning the title.
-Kimo's gauranteed contract, which paid him $55,000 to fight and had no win bonus, is not the norm in the UFC but is not all that unusual, either. Several other fighters have had similar contracts in the past (with no win bonus), including Carlos Newton, who always fights with that kind of contract when he fights in the UFC.
-It was expected that Tim Sylvia might have to take a pay cut after coming back from his steroid scandal, but the opposite is true. This is due to the fact that Sylvia is in the middle of a five-fight contract that appears to pay him slightly more with each passing fight. Sylvia's most recent fight prior to UFC 48 saw Sylvia make $30,000 for fighting and another $30,000 for winning. Sylvia's fight at UFC 48 saw him make $40,000 for fighting, and he would have made an additional $40,000 if he had been victorious.
-If you want to talk about fighters who might have had to play a little bit of hardball to get their current deals (based on the current UFC pay landscape), the three names that would come to mind would be Evan Tanner, Frank Trigg, and Renato Verissimo.
-In Renato Verissimo's case, it is extremely unusual for any fighter in only his second UFC fight to have a contract that pays him $10,000 to fight and another $10,000 if he wins. Even Robbie Lawler doesn't make that kind of money, and he is one of the UFC's "poster boys." Then again, when your first UFC fight is such a thorough and impressive domination of a fighter like Carlos Newton, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Verissimo got this much of a pay raise for his second UFC fight. (Verissimo's first UFC fight paid him $5,000 to fight and another $5,000 to win.)
-Frank Trigg pulled off the slightly more impressive feat of getting a two-fight contract with the UFC wherein both fights would pay him $10,000 to fight and another $10,000 to win. (The UFC 45 fight with Matt Hughes was the first fight on Trigg's contract, and the UFC 48 fight with Dennis Hallman was the second.) Trigg likely got that kind of deal by sitting out so long and turning down several offers for less money, and actually making it seem like it was a step down for him to make $10,000 and $10,000. While that's considered a lot of money on the UFC pay scale due to the fact that Trigg is "just a welterweight," it really shouldn't be that way in my opinion. Trigg came in as a big-name free agent signing who was going to fight for the title at his weight class. To do so for any less than $10,000 and $10,000 would only skew the pay scale of the whole 170-pound weight class downward.
-I was also somewhat surprised to see that Evan Tanner's contract for UFC 48 paid him $15,000 to fight and another $15,000 to win. That might not seem like a lot of money, but it's fairly high up on the UFC pay scale for non-main-eventers, and is only slightly smaller than the contract that Baroni himself came into UFC 48 with. The reason it was surprising for me to see Tanner making that much money is not because he doesn't deserve it; I just wouldn't expect that kind of money to be going to someone whose only fights in the UFC over the previous two years consisted of getting TKO'ed by Rich Franklin and scoring a controversial victory over Phil Baroni. It was a risky investment for Zuffa to pay Tanner that much for his UFC 48 bout with Baroni when it was considered a strong possibility that Tanner would be knocked out and might then be gone from the UFC for a long time. Fortunately, Tanner made Zuffa's investment in him more than worth it with his impressive performance at UFC 48.
-One of the reasons that Phil Baroni has gotten the treatment he has gotten from the UFC is that he is a big name from New York, and the UFC's pay-per-view buy rates have always been noticeably lower on the East Coast than on the West Coast. The line of thinking is that if a marketable fighter from a big East Coast city such as New York were to do well in the UFC and blossom into a championship-caliber fighter, it could boost buy-rates on the East Coast. So, given that some people within Zuffa consider Phil Baroni to be one of the company's top draws, I would actually consider his UFC 48 contract of $20,000 to fight and another $20,000 if he wins to be a little lower than I expected. One could easily argue that Baroni is lucky to be employed at all given the fact that he intentionally struck an official in the face several times, but if you're going to employ him and you consider him one of your top draws, I would expect to see him making more than $20,000 to fight and $20,000 more to win.
However, now that Baroni is 3-4 in the UFC, even casual fans have caught on to the fact that Baroni is more about marketing than actual fighting. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but you have to be considered "more about marketing than actual fighting" when anyone else with your record would have been long-gone from the UFC by now. New fans who have started watching the UFC since September of 2002 have never seen Baroni win a fight on pay-per-view. It would be a major blow to the UFC's credibility if Phil Baroni, or any other fighter on a three-fight losing streak, would continue to the fight in the UFC with no explanation or sense of consistency, as if he's not on a three-fight losing streak.
While Phil Baroni is obviously a much higher-caliber athlete than Tank Abbott, the comparison has to be made to Tank Abbott's 2003 Death March through the UFC, which was an embarrassment to the sport and turned off even casual fans by the end. If it's just about getting fighters with a marketable look who can cut pro wrestling-style promos, there are any number of (non-WWE) pro wrestlers that the UFC could sign who could, A) Have a marketable look, B) Cut pro wrestling-style promos, and C) Maintain a losing record in the UFC. Given all of these facts, I would consider it to be a huge gift to Phil Baroni if he fights again in the UFC for any amount of money (much less for $20,000 and $20,000) without having to prove himself on smaller shows like anyone else would have to.
Making it Big in the UFC
Not all fighters make $10,000 or more for competing in the UFC. In fact, on most UFC events the majority of the fighters make less than $10,000. The six fighters on this event who were gauranteed to take home less than $10,000 were Georges St. Pierre, Trevor Prangley, Dennis Hallman, Curtis Stout, Jay Hieron, and Ivan Menjivar. This is consistent with the salary structure in the UFC for fighters who are not considered "big stars" and are not long-time UFC veterans.
If you're not considered an already established big star coming in, it's almost certain that your first one, two, or three UFC fights are going to pay you $2,000 to $4,000 to fight, and another $2,000 to $4,000 if you win. Even Lee Murray, with all of the hype around his debut at UFC 46, only made $3,000 and $3,000. This relatively small paycheck is acceptable for fighters who simply love to fight and don't care about the money, but even these fighters have to have "bigger paydays down the road" as a topic in the back of their mind.
What's so risky for fighters coming up through the ranks in the UFC is the fact that there is so little room for error. Looking at UFC newcomers since the first Zuffa-run UFC event in early 2001, the trend is clear: Lose one fight, and there is a very strong possibility that you're out of the UFC for the forseeable future. Lose two fights, and you're almost certainly out. There is often no second chance, and hardly ever a third chance, for a young hopeful just starting out in the UFC making a few thousand dollars per fight. For aspiring mixed martial artists, the task of getting to the UFC is not the big payoff at the end of the rainbow in and of itself. It's only after you succeed in the UFC on multiple occasions that you can begin the dream job of doing something you love for a living and getting paid good money to do it.