The UFC wants their hand in the cookie jar of any sponsorship deal set to come down the pipe for any of the fighters they have under contract. The fighters are signed to unfair, one-sided contracts which heavily favors the UFC and puts questionable stipulation clauses in said contracts to ensure only one side really benefits from the signing.
The sponsor's are required to pay the UFC quite a bit of money (see post #10) in order to sponsor individual fighters and it pretty much ensures a limited number of companies will participate and limits only the most successful fighters who appear on televised events, ppv to receive such sponsorship's in the process. Fighters who are relegated to minimal commercial exposure are often times passed up for such sponsorship's altogether for obvious reasons.
So the fighters who are already paid peanuts, pennies on the dollar by the UFC, are further screwed over by the questionable business practices of the UFC and find little means to support themselves otherwise due to the hard line tactics Zuffa imposes in their contractual obligations to these fighters. In essence, Zuffa ensures the guys who round out their cards see bare minimum return despite the fact they train their asses off daily, weekly, monthly in order to properly prepare for events which will make Zuffa a great deal of money while the backbone of their operation, the fighters themselves, see bare minimum wages.
These fighters take beatings in the gym, suffer numerous combat related injuries such as black eyes, broken noses, bones etc. while taking repeated blows which add up and in time for some of them will mean serious consequences (pugilistic dementia) etc. While being compensated very poorly for their sacrifices.
Factor in gym fee's, trainer fee's, medical and other bills which pile up while these guys are preparing for professional events and it does not take long to see just how badly these guys and gals are being taken advantage of. Many of them struggle in their personal lives while chasing a dream which will only pay off for a small percentage of them in the end. With families to support, its a wonder any of them stick with it long term.
Sadly most of them refuse to speak up, and when they do, are quickly coerced to retract such statements due to contractual stipulations, fear of being cut etc. And you're dealing with an organization in the UFC who just uses and abuses their employee's and tosses them to the side like used napkins once the urge strikes them.
With the match makers master minding the match ups, its easy to put fighter X in with bad match ups favoring whoever the UFC fancies the most and you get a continuous revolving door of fighters treated like expendables.
Sadly, many "fans" of this board will attempt to minimize these and others facts in order to white knight the UFC from all responsibility while condoning the treatment of these fighters by an organization who could give a damn about anyone or anything but their bottom line. Some of these "fans" may be too young to understand what they're doing, others may in fact be shills for the UFC themselves attempting to socially engineer acceptance of their business methodologies.
Very shady.
have you ever seen Jose Aldos hand speed? Lol. If I was a pro fighter (hopefully one day and pretty successful one at that) I would love redbull to sponsor me
