It's all just guessing what these fighters are getting and is it even a big amount for most fighters. One big change with many fighters is the day of 8 or 10 different sponsors are kind of gone for the most part. It's usually a one to three sponsors and that is it. Now is that just the way fighters are doing business now or is it very hard to find sponsors and that is all they can find, I don't really know. Also just because a company appears to have cash, it doesn't mean they spend it stupidly either.
In general if you ever done any research on the sponsorship of MMA fighters you'll find out a few things very quickly. First, for every fighter like Schaub making around a 100K a fight you had dozens of fighters that couldn't even get 5K. In other words many times the rich kept getting richer. Second, you'll find back in the "hay-day" of sponsorships you'll find story after story of fighters being stiffed. After they spent tons of time securing the sponsorship and in some cases even doing appearances and never seeing a cent. Third, you'll find many companies went under that did sponsor or got out of sponsoring fighters. Through the years I've heard in interviews on MMA radio/pod/internet shows that many of these owners or people associated with the company claimed they saw little to anything out of sponsoring fighters. Lastly, a few fighters that have came through Bellator through the years have stated sponsorship money was almost nonexistent outside of being one of the top guys in the org. Hell, one fighter came on this forum looking for anyone that had a connection or wanted to sponsor him in his title fight on TV.
Now by no means am I saying the UFC/Reebok deal has worked out. I think the plan was to clean up the crap, help even out the pay, and eventually get Reebok to allow other blue chip/large sponsors come on board and advertise on the exclusive clothing of Reebok for the UFC and in return that money would help build up the pot to pay out to fighters. We see this on a very small scale with Monster. Are we having these talks if the Sponsorship tier dollar amount were double, I don't think we'd hear a whole lot of fighters speaking up and that is easily doable if Reebok agrees with the UFC to let Modelo or Pepsi or whatever be a part of it. I think when this deal is up that is what we are going see and lesson learned for all involved.
Overall on the surface it all looks great but chances are very high it's good for the upper guys(maybe 10% of Bellator fighters) and tough sledding for everyone else.
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