The Faulty Math of The Bonus, and a Simple Solution

[BBMN]

The Problem

Dana White has stated the bonuses help out fighter pay, and encourage fighters to finish fights.

But this is blatant bullshit to anyone that spends a few minutes looking into it.

"Get a load of this goof and his math and logic and stuff. Ya goof!"


If Fighter A is making $25k to show, and $25 to win, he knows how important it is to win. He doubles his pay with a victory. He might be able to double his pay and get a huge KO bonus of $50k, which would again double his pay all the way up to $100k. But that's the rub. It's almost like betting on poker. If you have a guy beat (you know you are pulling away on points and can almost certainly win the decision), but then you wonder if you can hit a "double or nothing" (you're ahead but you begin to focus on getting a KO or setting up a sub, even though you know how dangerous your opponent is).

Two things - It's not truly double or nothing. If Fighter A goes for the KO and gets put to sleep, Fighter A still gets his base of 25k. Second, Fighter A goes for the KO and gets it? That bonus is up for grabs if a single other person got a KO that night. Just because he went for a finish, does not mean he will get that bonus. At all.

So you can see, it's a huge gamble to abandon your plan when you're ahead. It's essentially putting at risk the ability to double your pay of 25k, for the chance to quadruple it all the way up to 100k, knowing that even if you get the finish, you might not even get that sweet $50,000 KO Bonus. So what would a fighter do that desperately needs a solid chunk of money, but doesn't need a ton? He will fight for the victory, not the finish. He will go for the win, not the bonus. The idea of gambling away so much money to maybe get or not get even more might not be an option to some of these fighters.


Let's take a look at UFC 197. Bonuses of $50k were awarded to four fighters -
Fight Of The Night: Dominique Steele & Danny Roberts

Performance Bonuses: Yair Rodriguez, Demetrious Johnson

That's $200k, and three of the four getting equal chunks of it benefit greatly as they are lower paid guys. Mighty Mouse already is making bank, so him getting an extra $50k will not "change his life" as Dana has said the bonuses can do.

Let's look at two guys that did finish, and did not get a bonus.
Walt Harris: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus)

Taken before finding out there would be no KO bonus

Marcos Rogerio de Lima: $24,000 (includes $12,000 win bonus)

Taken after finding out there would be no KO bonus... "No bonus.... no bonus?"

Walt was at 10k+10k, and Lima was at 12k+12k. Holy shit. I didn't know they were still as low at 10+10...

So that's nice. The UFC likes to tout how the money can change a prelim guy's life and they decide to give extra cash to a guy getting $195k + $40k (Reebok) over either of these guys. Mighty Mouse walks with nearly a quarter mil, and these young guys will take home a several grand after camp, medicals, and taxes.

Life changing!

 

[BBMN]

The Solution

I promise, Dana, simple addition and division isn't hard.

There are two solutions to this. Dana has said they could cut the bonuses altogether and simply pay more. If this was the case, and all fighters making less than a guaranteed $30k to show at 197 were given equal cuts of the $200,000 bonus cash, they would all get roughly 13k each. That is a ton of money to people that are only getting a base of $10,000 to $24,000.

The other option to keep the bonuses in place is also very simple. Divide up the $200,000 into a pool. Equal shares would be given to the two fighters that put on the Fight of the Night, and also everyone that gets a finish.

At 197 we would've seen 6 bonuses of 33k, instead of 4 bonuses of 50k. The two guys that finished and didn't get a finish bonus, now would get 33k each. It's easy to see any card with more than two finishes (which is to say, most cards) would see this money cut up among more fighters. If there were 6 finishes for the night, you would see 8 bonuses, for a total of $25,000 per person. That's huge. It would still give some incentive to finish, and would help more people.

 

[sirmorbach]

I confess I have never thought too much about it, but I like your ideas. If it helps the fighters to make a little more money, I'm all in.

 

[Disquiet]

Yeah- anybody that is shocked that Dana's take on fighter pay doesn't make any sense hasn't been paying the slightest bit of attention to the way this industry is working. The crux of it is that having a win bonus doesn't incentivize finishes, it incentivizes decisions. Dana just wants to keep the salaries as low as possible-period. None of that shit he said about boxing actually made any sense. The fact that Floyd happens to be the highest paid boxer and still doesn't have a particularly aggressive style means nothing.

 

[The Big Bang]

The Problem

Dana White has stated the bonuses help out fighter pay, and encourage fighters to finish fights.

But this is blatant bullshit to anyone that spends a few minutes looking into it.

"Get a load of this goof and his math and logic and stuff. Ya goof!"


If Fighter A is making $25k to show, and $25 to win, he knows how important it is to win. He doubles his pay with a victory. He might be able to double his pay and get a huge KO bonus of $50k, which would again double his pay all the way up to $100k. But that's the rub. It's almost like betting on poker. If you have a guy beat (you know you are pulling away on points and can almost certainly win the decision), but then you wonder if you can hit a "double or nothing" (you're ahead but you begin to focus on getting a KO or setting up a sub, even though you know how dangerous your opponent is).

Two things - It's not truly double or nothing. If Fighter A goes for the KO and gets put to sleep, Fighter A still gets his base of 25k. Second, Fighter A goes for the KO and gets it? That bonus is up for grabs if a single other person got a KO that night. Just because he went for a finish, does not mean he will get that bonus. At all.

So you can see, it's a huge gamble to abandon your plan when you're ahead. It's essentially putting at risk the ability to double your pay of 25k, for the chance to quadruple it all the way up to 100k, knowing that even if you get the finish, you might not even get that sweet $50,000 KO Bonus. So what would a fighter do that desperately needs a solid chunk of money, but doesn't need a ton? He will fight for the victory, not the finish. He will go for the win, not the bonus. The idea of gambling away so much money to maybe get or not get even more might not be an option to some of these fighters.


Let's take a look at UFC 197. Bonuses of $50k were awarded to four fighters -
Fight Of The Night: Dominique Steele & Danny Roberts

Performance Bonuses: Yair Rodriguez, Demetrious Johnson

That's $200k, and three of the four getting equal chunks of it benefit greatly as they are lower paid guys. Mighty Mouse already is making bank, so him getting an extra $50k will not "change his life" as Dana has said the bonuses can do.

Let's look at two guys that did finish, and did not get a bonus.
Walt Harris: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus)

Taken before finding out there would be no KO bonus

Marcos Rogerio de Lima: $24,000 (includes $12,000 win bonus)

Taken after finding out there would be no KO bonus... "No bonus.... no bonus?"

Walt was at 10k+10k, and Lima was at 12k+12k. Holy shit. I didn't know they were still as low at 10+10...

So that's nice. The UFC likes to tout how the money can change a prelim guy's life and they decide to give extra cash to a guy getting $195k + $40k (Reebok) over either of these guys. Mighty Mouse walks with nearly a quarter mil, and these young guys will take home a several grand after camp, medicals, and taxes.

Life changing!

Ace post.

Fighter bonuses are indeed faulty; it gives credence to those who contend that the UFC is flawed from the ground up.

That said, I do give the organization props for NOT giving in to Conor being a fucking cry baby.

Next on the agenda should be the banishment of knee kicks against the joint. The rules for said kicks should mirror kickboxing...

Oh, and goggles. It's still mind boggling to me that they aren't at least experimenting with the idea. They could be molded to fit each fighters facial structure; they should be thin and kind of squishy around the edges, but rigid in the center...and they may need to be wider than normal goggles so the force of strikes is more spread out... I digress.

 

[Darwinambrosius]

The potential for a bonus is such a shitty thing to rely on and I'm always surprised to see so many fighters who do so. I certainly don't plan my holiday spending based on my office sending me a nice check around Christmas.

 

[blazerkor]

He says that to shut down the argument not because he's serious. He wants to incentive every fighter regardless of pay, to go out and do something spectacular. There is no problem. If a fighter can't make a living under the terms of their contract they shouldn't sign that contract. The more a fighter does perform and/or promote themselves the more they will make. It's as easy as that. Is it always fair? No, business always has politics and favorites and people getting screwed over... it's also like that in every pro sport.

 

[BBMN]

The crux of it is that having a win bonus doesn't incentivize finishes, it incentivizes decisions...

Exactly.

 

[GordaoPreguico]

You would think the ufc would get rid of them when fighters are begging for them after fights. Imo it looks bad

 

[BBMN]

You would think the ufc would get rid of them when fighters are begging for them after fights. Imo it looks bad

Bonuses would still be there. More times than not even more people would get bonuses.

And I highly doubt management is all, "Great, they're literally begging for money in front of our entire audience again!" There is nothing more fucked up than when people beg for money... on live tv.... from their billionaire boss. It's not a good look for anyone involved.

With a restructure, they wouldn't even think of begging... you got the finish? You get the bonus.

Seriously imagine being at a holiday work party, and everyone is drinking and having a good time, and people are signing karaoke, when Bill from accounting grabs the mic and starts pleading for a Christmas bonus because his wife just found out she's pregnant.... That's what it's like when fighters pull that shit post-fight.

 

[BrazilianDude]

Just as a curiosity, US$ 24k is pretty good money in Brazil. It does not make anyone rich, but it's good, even after you pay for training costs and health insurance.

 

[mee-how!]

Great post, I've always thought the bonus system was flawed. An idea I had was to simply eliminate the main and co-main bouts from performance bonuses. Under most circumstances the fighters in these bouts are all paid well above average and the money would go to fighters in the lower income tiers. Just a thought.

 

[DrunkenHigh]

Just as a curiosity, US$ 24k is pretty good money in Brazil. It does not make anyone rich, but it's good, even after you pay for training costs and health insurance.

Do they pay tax in both countries?

 

[WallyBear]

Remember when Miller subbed Camoes with a beautiful armbar, but they gave the Sub of the Night bonus to Ronda, despite Ronda getting a shitload of money AND getting the Fight of the Night bonus? What a load of bullshit, Miller's sub was 10x more SOTN worthy than Ronda's armbar against Miesha.

The system is indeed flawed, it's not transparent and it all depends on the mood of the UFC executives.

 

[BrazilianDude]

Do they pay tax in both countries?

I don't think so. Maybe they pay the brazilians through their brazilian branch to avoid that problem.

 

[dim_]

I just think a pool of money split evenly between everyone who gets a ko, sub as well as the two fotn fighters

its noticable that ko of the night and sub o the night award have basically gone now.

UFC will never do it though, its way too logical

 

[Coolidge]

Great post, I've always thought the bonus system was flawed. An idea I had was to simply eliminate the main and co-main bouts from performance bonuses. Under most circumstances the fighters in these bouts are all paid well above average and the money would go to fighters in the lower income tiers. Just a thought.

There's no logic behind penalizing them for being paid well. They should be eligible for the same bonuses. You're proposing we discriminate against successful fighters in order to artificially uplift the less successful ones.

 

[mee-how!]

There's no logic behind penalizing them for being paid well. They should be eligible for the same bonuses. You're proposing we discriminate against successful fighters in order to artificially uplift the less successful ones.

I suppose you could look at it that way but I was promoting rewarding the fighters that are up and coming rather than penalizing the stars. There are just too many examples, like WallyBear's above where Dana simply gives the bonuses to the main / co-main fighters when there were obviously more deserving choices on a card. Dana just uses the FOTN / POTN cash to further line the stars pockets in many cases. Again, we all look it it differently though and I respect your point.

 

[Coolidge]

I suppose you could look at it that way but I was promoting rewarding the fighters that are up and coming rather than penalizing the stars. There are just too many examples, like WallyBear's above where Dana simply gives the bonuses to the main / co-main fighters when there were obviously more deserving choices on a card. Dana just uses the FOTN / POTN cash to further line the stars pockets in many cases. Again, we all look it it differently though and I respect your point.

Perhaps it might work better if the fans and media had some input in the matter? I believe they do that on TUF.

 

[JaneJanes]

I like your idea better than the current system, but still has some flaws. Fights finished doesn't necessarily indicate how exciting the fight was. There could be an extremely boring Gabriel Gonzaga vs Kevin Jordan fight that ends in a finish, and awards a bonus. Whereas there can be multiple exciting fights like Jones vs Gustafsson, Melendez vs Sanchez, Lawler vs Condit that end in a decision with only one pair of those fighters receiving the FOTN bonus.