Do you want to be a [expletive] fighter? While the upper echelon of mixed martial artists can score big financially with cuts of UFC pay-per-view revenues and lucrative sponsorships, most fighters toil in relative obscurity and face a myriad of uphill battlesIn our most recent MMAjunkie /”Inside MMA” poll, we asked our readers to determine, “What is the biggest problem facing top level MMA fighters today?”
The results were revealed on Friday’s new edition of “Inside MMA” on HDNet, and one answer garnered nearly one-third of the vote: fighter pay. With seven categories to choose from, 31 percent among the thousands that cast votes believe that the “Low/disproportionate pay among fighters” is the biggest problem in the sport today.
Low pay is a certainly a subjective evaluation. In an economy where many Americans don’t even have jobs, the paydays made on the sport’s top levels are undoubtedly attractive on paper. But as recently as February’s UFC 109, the most recent UFC event for which salaries were released, one fighter, Ronnys Torres, made just $4,000, while Randy Couture made $250,000.
Of course, those figures only include the monies disclosed to the state athletic commission. And of course, a cursory examination of the UFC’s sister company, World Extreme Cagefighting, shows that the highest-paid fighter on January’s WEC 46 card, Urijah Faber, made $52,000 – or $8,000 less than the extra checks issued to UFC 109′s “Fight Night” bonus winners.
Ironically, the WEC’s efforts to adjust that pay differential through pay-per-revenue at April’s WEC 48 card has been met with much backlash from the MMA community.UFC heavyweight contender Cain Velasquez, who was a guest on this past week’s edition of “Inside MMA,” said he has has faith that things will improve.
“The sport’s growing so big; the pay will grow with it,” Velasquez said. “The bigger it gets, the more people see it, it will constantly get bigger. It’s going to just keep growing and growing.”"Inside MMA” co-host Bas Rutten also brought up fighter safety as a major concern, but he believes the poll’s second-ranked selection, “Lack of competition among top promotions,” which came in with 22 percent of the response, is also quite troublesome.
“We need more big organizations, just like in boxing,” Rutten said. “We need two or three more big organizations. When that competition starts, then the pay for the fighters will also increase.”So, did the readers get it right? Do you think Velasquez and Rutten are correct in their evaluations? State your case in the comments section below.
