Do kickboxers make enough to retire on?

[Roid Monster]

K-1: Battle the Bellagio III Fighter Salaries from 2004. I highlighted their biggest stars.

-Marvin Eastman: $10,000
-Sergei Gur: $9,100
-Chad "Akebono" Rowan: $7,800
-Gary Goodridge: $7,800
-Rony Sefo: $7,800
-Brecht Walis: $7,800
-Jorgen Kruth: $7,800
-Jan Nortje: $7,800
-Ray Sefo: $6,550
-Alexander Ustinov: $6,500
-Carter Williams: $6,000
-Rick Roufus: $6,000
-Dewey Cooper: $6,000
-Mighty Mo Siliga: $5,550
-Tommy Glanville: $5,000
-Scott Lighty: $2,000
-Frank Cota, Jr: $2,000
-Rob McCullough: $2,000
-Anthony Brown: $1,800
-Brian Warren: $1,500
-Raul Romero: $1,500
-James Martinez: $1,000
-Alex Jucan: $1,000

[edwin]

I'm not surprised to hear they make a ton of money. In the King of the Ring Tyrone Spong documentary, you can see he's making some pretty big bucks kickboxing.

I always thought kickboxers made more than MMA fighters. I'm not sure this is 100% accurate though.

[jj manchester]

Originally Posted by Vampire2

Tyrone Spong coming to MMA should tell you all you need to know.

preparations for that move began when K1 went under and by the time Glory emerged as a replacement, he was already far down the mma path and decided to continue

the likes of aerts and crocop are millionaires and could retire tomorrow but they dont because they are still able to keep doing it and they can still milk the cow; if you come from nothing and youve got the chance to add 100, 200k to your bank balance every fight, even if youre limping in and out of it in bits, as long as you can keep doing it you will do it.

You'll ride that shit til the wheels fall off because youre not going to get a second chance making that kind of money. Who has ever put money in the bank then gone, "you know what, ive got enough money now, im gonna stop making more" - ?

[jj manchester]

Originally Posted by Roid Monster

K-1: Battle the Bellagio III Fighter Salaries from 2004. I highlighted their biggest stars.

-Marvin Eastman: $10,000
-Sergei Gur: $9,100
-Chad "Akebono" Rowan: $7,800
-Gary Goodridge: $7,800
-Rony Sefo: $7,800
-Brecht Walis: $7,800
-Jorgen Kruth: $7,800
-Jan Nortje: $7,800
-Ray Sefo: $6,550
-Alexander Ustinov: $6,500
-Carter Williams: $6,000
-Rick Roufus: $6,000
-Dewey Cooper: $6,000
-Mighty Mo Siliga: $5,550
-Tommy Glanville: $5,000
-Scott Lighty: $2,000
-Frank Cota, Jr: $2,000
-Rob McCullough: $2,000
-Anthony Brown: $1,800
-Brian Warren: $1,500
-Raul Romero: $1,500
-James Martinez: $1,000
-Alex Jucan: $1,000

these were official payments as recorded by the athletic commission. The AC payments are always bullshit because they pay tax on them, so the fighters always get off-the-books payments either as straight cash in envelopes or as a 'consultancy fee' or 'service agreement' or whatever.

the UFC does the exact same thing. Fighters are cool with it because they dont want to have their lump earnings mega-taxed and quite right too.

[moreorless87]

As with Japanese MMA my guess is that the really big names have made their serious money from advertising and sponsorship due to the amount of TV exposure they got during the sports peak years.

[Falconkick]

Originally Posted by Vampire2

Tyrone Spong coming to MMA should tell you all you need to know.

Spong made it clear he thinks he is the best, and that there is no more competition for him....Which there definitely is. That is the reasoning for the transition. Not money.

[moreorless87]

One obvious issue with Sprong not mentioned so far is that in kickboxing the serious money is limated to HW and 155, in MMA on the other hand he can earn serious money fighting at 205.

[Balthasar]

Sure the top of the top make big bucks. And those below the top of the top can get get easily bread on the table, but if they injure themselves or lose some fights they get money problems quite easily I think. And then we are talking about like what? 10 guys? 50 guys? How many people are trying to make a career out of kickboxing/K-1/Muay Thai? Thousand (s) probably. Look at the houses of the #1 contenders in MMA, just average houses if you look at primetime. Condit, Koscheck, Fitch, those guys. They get payed double as much as the fighter who is behind them, and quadruple as much as the fighter who is 2 places behind them. Also 10,000 sounds like a lot, but they only fight 2,5 times per year, so that makes for 25,000 per year, which a pretty big cut of it goes to their trainers/gym etc.

In soccer, everbody who plays pro in Europe gets solid money, and gets good insurance, and if they get injured that is taken care of much better also. 6 mil for Badr Hari really isn't much compared to soccer players who make 6 mil a week, or Messi with 180 mil a year and gets 100 times more sponsor money, and also does commercials for Nike which air in every country and lends his image out to FIFA games.

From those thousands of kickboxer who are trying to become pro, only 100 can get by, so they are taking a lot of financial risk by trying to get to that level. If the money were more equal, it would be financially easier to try to become the best of the world or make solid money. Which would also cause for a better talentpool, where fighters don't drop out of trying to get to the top because they can't afford the training and not being able to work because of the amount of training they do.

[AdamBJJoz]

Well, I've been covering media for MuayThai/K-1 & MMA since the late 90's & can confirm for you guys that some of the numbers being thrown around in here are quite frankly just hilarious.

Here's the current reality of pay scales in the sport for MuayThai, K-1 & K-1 rules events like Glory:

Heavyweights get paid the most in about 95% of all scenarios, with the very rare occurrence at the moment of Glory & other organisations paying the 70kg weight class fighters HUGE money for winning their events/tournaments, as there has just been a massive 12-month long bidding war going on for the services of a few select 70kg fighters (like Petrosyan, etc....).

So here's the current general pay scales (For Heavies - rule of thumb is that any lighter weight classes receives at best half these amounts):
- Big fight on a national promotion in countries where the sport is popular & televised: $10K-$30K
- Lesser name fighter fighting a big name in the above scenario: $5K-$15K
- Anyone else on the card of the above scenario: $1K if their lucky
- WMC world title fight: $10K plus depending on your name recognition
- Other sanctioning body world title fight: $5K plus depending on your name recognition
- Undercard fight on a K-1 event: $3K plus depending on your name recognition
- Main Card fight on a K-1 event: $10K plus depending on your name recognition
- Undercard fight on a Glory event: $5K-$15K
- Main Card fight in a Glory event: $30K-$60K
- Glory/It's Showtime non-GP world title fight: $15K-$100K
- K-1 non-GP world title fight: $60K plus depending on your name recognition
- Headliner on a K-1 event: $80K plus depending on your name recognition
- Headliner on a Glory event: $100K plus depending on your name recognition
- Winner of a K-1 GP: $200K plus
- Winner of a Glory GP: $300K plus

Things to take into account though:
- Most if not all fighters not fighting in their own country lose 50% of the purse to tax.
- European fighters almost all have contracts that see 30% of their purse go straight to the manager/team before tax.
- There are probably less than a handful of K-1 & Glory fighters in the world top-30 at the moment who manage their own affairs. Aerts/Crocop/Spong & Slowinski would be some of them.
- No fighter in the history of K-1 has ever been paid close to a million dollars for a fight. Masato, Peter Aerts, Hoost & Bob Sapp would be the only one's to have raked in over a million in a single year & that would be via sponsorships & marketing deals outside of K-1. Many of K-1's biggest names never came close to earning big money from anything other than fights, because they weren't interested in doing sponsorship deals & marketing in Japan & their own countries, or their sport was just plain out unknown/unpopular where they came from.
- Talk of fighters being sent broke by the last K-1 management is misleading. At most fighters had maybe one or two bouts that were not paid for in full. Those that suffered financially the worst suffered because regional K-1 promoters & managers went broke or did runners in the lead up to K-1 going under. Ray Sefo and a handful of other fighters were effected worst by that scenario, as their managers took the advance payments from K-1 for those bouts and never paid the fighters, then claimed bankruptcy too. Most of the European fighters would have been affected that way too, because their teams/managers keep that advance payment part as a "management fee" even if the second half of the payment never comes through. This was a major issue that led to an exodus of fighters from the two major fight teams/gym's in Holland. Those fighters would have been fine were it not for terrible contracts they had signed.
- WMC world title fights for guys under 70kg (especially the Thai's) may only pay as little as a few hundred dollars, but the same guys fighting in another country may then get $30K for a title fight. The amounts on offer vary massively, depending on your name recognition, the country your having the fight in & the popularity of the event your fighting on. Last year Saenchai fought for a WMC title in Thailand for a payment equivalent to a night's worth of food & drink at a decent restaurant. He then fought a week later in Europe for an amount that enabled him to buy every person in his family a house & then enough for him to retire on.
- Big name fighters who are toward's the end of their career and a shadow of their former selves can earn massive money by taking bout's against up & comers who will agree to as little as a 10% split of the fight purse on offer. Classic cases of this are anyone vs Peter Aerts in Glory/It's Showtime fights & anyone vs Crocop in K-1 bouts.
- Smaller regional K-1 events pay a pittance compared to the bigger shows, with most fighters not getting more than $2K, win or lose. Regional GP winners collect as little as $5K for their efforts & then may have to fight elsewhere a couple times to qualify for the final 16.
- Fighters are almost never selected on actual results/merit/rank for the K-1 or Glory World GP final 16. Fighters are selected based on who the promoters of the event have best relationships with, amongst the managers and trainers out there. Fighter pay scales & opportunities to compete against name-fighters are often also affected by these relationships in the same way. Bas Boon can guarantee any fighter a spot on an It's Showtime/Glory event if they are with his team. Ernesto Hoost can do the same for K-1.

[Kiro]

Hey Adam, that was interesting reading. Thanks.