Media Kevin Lee compares UFC fighter pay to waitress tips at Applebee's

oscerthegrouch said:
IF you just taking my order bring my drinks... and cleaning the table for the next customer ( your job) if you nice you get 15 % if your a ass you lucky i tip at all there no you got to tip shit its base on your service! if you an ass you get ass pay! way way too many unionized government workers here think somehow they have human right to a job whether or not they do it right lol...😂 screw that..
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It’s absurd that places like Moe’s and Subway expect you to tip now. Way to read the room Subway…your subs cost like $15 now and you also expect the customer to help you pay your employees now???
 
JBJ was here said:
Minimum wage is ridiculously low in the U.S. and in most states is even lower for tipped jobs. The Federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13/hr with no benefits, which qualifies as slave wages. Tips are also shared with the staff.
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Some waiters from high end restaurants make $300-$400 a day. I worked for many 1 and even 2 michellin stared restaurants, w2 reached six figures in my best year… hell even more than what i make now lol. But yeah… for the most part it sucks. I think that the restaurant owners get away with paying their people shit and stick it up the customer’s ass. 20%+ tip is ridiculous. What about paying their waiters, runners and bussers like they pay their cooks/ chefs? Something decent guaranteed…It’s even worse with delivery people ( uber, doordash ). These greedy apps pay 2 bucks for a delivery in buttfuck nowhere…with the driver hoping to get a decent tip but the customer is already getting squeezed paying a lot for the food and delivery charge.
 
Guys, neither the fighters or the fans want to believe this, but it's not changing anytime soon.

Fighters will continue to fight, fans will continue to watch. And the fighters with a decade plus in the game will start to voice their dissatisfaction with the pay in the back half of their career.

There's no incentive for the suits at TKO to change a single thing in terms of a bigger cut for the roster, just bc they're making record profits every year.
 
Mohawk Banditó said:
Cuz some shitty ass owners were able to lobby the right people to establish this rule:

"A tipped employee engages in an occupation in which he or she customarily and regularly receives more than $30 per month in tips. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages if that amount combined with the tips received at least equals the federal minimum wage. If the employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. (If still employed)"
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Ozze said:
Never understood how can tips be so high in the US. 20% is absurd.
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15% is generally what is expected for good service, anything more is generosity.

The Federal minimum for tipped workers is null and void in any state that has other laws, which is probably mostly blue states. Where I live in CA, employers must pay state or local minimum wage (16/hour for state, higher in some localities) to everyone regardless of tips.

What has happened is that tipping culture has spun out of control because employers use it as a way to have customers pay part of their wages for their employees. Doordash, Lyft, Uber eats, Walmart delivery, Instacart, all of those and so many more pay absolute shit (less than minimum wage in states that allow it) but utilize social pressures to get these services paid through tips from customers. It's more the larger corporations, but many smaller businesses have a version of it also. You get handed a card reader that asks for a tip just about everywhere that people do any kind of service these days.
 
joy2day said:
You don't need to track their training though, you can see it reflected in their fights, resulting in them getting less money if they fight like they don't train hard. I'm sure Tai isn't the UFC's highest paid fighter. The pay does include training for those who are the high end of the scale because they generally DO train a lot to be that good.
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the thing is, you can't trust it. the easiest way to track it is to see it actually happening, because you'll get freaks like Jon Jones who publicly admit to partying and coking out on fight week because it helps him cope with the chance he might lose, but still go out there and destroy their opponents.

nobody, especially a giant conglomerate like WME/IMG is going to pay for something sight unseen. you must provide the evidence. like i said, the NFL/NBA/MLB all do this. they could do the same as you say too, but they don't because they have billions of dollars invested in their teams, they MUST see the training. having a shit fight could mean anything, injuries, personal problems, etc., but if they get to see you train every day they can at least rule out it's not that you're skipping training.
 
joy2day said:
You don't need to track their training though, you can see it reflected in their fights, resulting in them getting less money if they fight like they don't train hard. I'm sure Tai isn't the UFC's highest paid fighter. The pay does include training for those who are the high end of the scale because they generally DO train a lot to be that good.
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Fighters like Jones, Mighty Mouse, Tanner, etc., have all openly admitted they learned moves from Youtube/DVDs, and fighters have simply tried something mid-fight and influenced all the fighters who learned that that works from seeing them try it. None of that comes from "official" training and is completely free for them and has helped win countless fights.

They're all welcome to do as much or as little as they want, from whatever source they want, paid or not. The entire point of MMA was to remove the rigidity of other combat sports and simply see whatever any fighter wanted to do to try and win.
 
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Pancake Sprawl said:
the problem is, that is optional. look at the HW division. you can't tell me Tai Tuivasa is out there putting in the work, he freely admits to NEVER training BJJ, and from his fights, i have to believe it.

you get paid only for work in the real world, so if it were to come down to the training and stuff, you're going to need receipts for that. the NFL/NBA/MLB don't have this problem because they have organized training camps that the organizations get to watch the athletes train. so they KNOW if you're putting in the actual work or not.
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Yeah nobody wants to address that those organizations are in part willing to pay that much more because they literally know they've received a premium product having paid for the preparations prior to game day.
 
After GFL flops and goes out of business, Kevin Lee will be begging to come back to the UFC.
 
markg171 said:
Not a single one of you reply guys ever would say that a doctor's medical school counts against his pay. Or literally any other job that actually requires training before being able to do unlike MMA where it's simply your best interest to become proficient before doing so.

It exists solely here in MMA pay arguments because it's a dumb made up strawman. Fighters literally are paid simply to make weight and actually then fight. They're free to do as much or as little as they want for the entire rest of their time and then yes of course are responsible for that.
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Yeah doctors have huge education expenses, but they don't have to pay taxes, only MMA fighters do. That's what I learned on Sherdog at least.
 
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