Tim Kennedy Made More Sponorship Money Than Entire Fight Night Card

I agree, let Bellator absorb some of the fallout.

UFC will still always be better.
If another promotion pays better, eventually the UFC will lose fighters they want to keep.
Happened in the PRIDE days. Zuffa didn't have the fighter pay to keep their champions and they all jumped ship to fight in PRIDE to make more money.

I doubt anything that extreme will happen as the UFC gets more exposure than Bellator, but the middling guys with popular fan bases might eventually jump ship if they aren't paid properly.
 
In hindsight Reebok paid 70 million for years of exclusive in ring sponsorships of Ronda, Conor, and any other superstar that comes along. They're not interested in non draws and they're not really even interested based on who is holding a belt. They know that to guarantee they are sponsors of the stars, they needed the clause that everyone had to wear Reebok. So for you guys boycotting, they probably don't care, because they never intended to make money off kit sales.
 
You are making good points, and I do think a lot of MMA managers seem incompetent.

But if the UFC wanted its piece of the advertising gravy train and got into a deal with Reebok for a small fraction of what that sponsorship spot was really worth, then they were even more incompetent.

It's a bad deal, not only for the fighters but also for the UFC.

Yes it does seem odd that they sold the rights for such a small price. I don't know what the logic is there. Maybe they thought the Giblert shirts would be a big hit.
 
Would be nice to see Bellator become a home to some more great fighters.
Force Mma " fans " to get out of their Ufc bubble.

You guys are reaching by deflecting the blame upon managers.
 
As a happy medium, why not allow the fighters to have 2 sponsors. 1 small logo on the front, like some have with the "Monster" logo and one medium to large one on the back?

That way, they can get their sponsorship money up, as sponsors are fighting for limited ad space. Top guys would get good brands and the lesser known lower tier guys would get the "Condom Depots" of this world.

That's a great idea but the UFC will look at it like it's money coming out of their pockets and/or loss of control.

The only thing that can balance this shit storm out at this point is a fighters union.

And I agree about the cage looking like absolute shit now with all the logos. I feel like Zuffa is giving everyone the middle finger by having to look at those things.
 
They need a union, like every other big league. It's obvious.

Totally agree , we all know that the ufc is going to try to screw Tim over for having an opinion

They just need like 50%+ of the fighter to say to hell with it were not fighting until we have a proper negotiation
 
Amount of money in those 'Reebok payouts' is absolutely laughable, nothing new.

Still can't imagine how could they thought it would be good idea.
 
I haven't seen a thread discussion on this but it was pretty revealing.

Tim Kennedy on the MMA Hour stated that he made more sponsorship money in one fight than the entire roster combined on the Glover/OSP card and he did that in Strikeforce.

Pretty incredible. The Reebok payout for 13 fights and 26 fighters was reportedly $107,500. This includes Glover who recently challenged Jon Jones and main evented a PPV.

I've never been one to really complain about fighter pay but this really does highlight a big problem. When a guy like Tim Kennedy who wasn't the most high profile, charismatic or exciting fighter back then and he manages to make more money in one fight than 26 fighters AND he does it in Strikeforce.

Dana was correct in saying that sponsor logos all over tights should have never happened in the first place but he thought it was the right thing to do to get fighters extra money during the early days of the UFC. It shouldn't have happened but it doesn't change that it DID happen and guys made a lot more money than they do now.

Luke Thomas also brought up a good point that UFC was all about cleaning up the look of the sport and presentation yet there are more logos in the octagon than ever. They didn't clean up the look, they just took control of the sponsors and took money out of the fighters pocket and put it into theirs.

What can the UFC do at this point to make up the difference? Should they? I think they are in real danger of getting unionized. They just need a big star like GSP to pull it off.

Disagree
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I haven't seen a thread discussion on this but it was pretty revealing.

Tim Kennedy on the MMA Hour stated that he made more sponsorship money in one fight than the entire roster combined on the Glover/OSP card and he did that in Strikeforce.

Pretty incredible. The Reebok payout for 13 fights and 26 fighters was reportedly $107,500. This includes Glover who recently challenged Jon Jones and main evented a PPV.

I've never been one to really complain about fighter pay but this really does highlight a big problem. When a guy like Tim Kennedy who wasn't the most high profile, charismatic or exciting fighter back then and he manages to make more money in one fight than 26 fighters AND he does it in Strikeforce.

Dana was correct in saying that sponsor logos all over tights should have never happened in the first place but he thought it was the right thing to do to get fighters extra money during the early days of the UFC. It shouldn't have happened but it doesn't change that it DID happen and guys made a lot more money than they do now.

Luke Thomas also brought up a good point that UFC was all about cleaning up the look of the sport and presentation yet there are more logos in the octagon than ever. They didn't clean up the look, they just took control of the sponsors and took money out of the fighters pocket and put it into theirs.

What can the UFC do at this point to make up the difference? Should they? I think they are in real danger of getting unionized. They just need a big star like GSP to pull it off.

per usual I completely agree with 99.99% of everything you post.

Dana and the Fertitas are gangsters. worse than Don King imo. they knew what this Reebok deal was going to do fighter's pay. They and their lawyers went over this deal for months. they know MMA fighters are far more easier to replicable from a talent development/time spent training standpoint compared to athletes from the other major sports.

So imo they can screw these guys endorsement deals which they lived on, cut dudes like Jimmo, and throw shit on a guy like Tito Ortiz that helped build the popularity of this sport because they advocate unionizing fighters.

And given the Fertitas legal fight with the NYC culinary union . I think they'd rather scuttle the UFC rather than recognize a Fighters Union. sad really. I still watch don't get me wrong. but I don't buy UFC PPV's anymore.
 
I haven't seen a thread discussion on this but it was pretty revealing.

Tim Kennedy on the MMA Hour stated that he made more sponsorship money in one fight than the entire roster combined on the Glover/OSP card and he did that in Strikeforce.

Pretty incredible. The Reebok payout for 13 fights and 26 fighters was reportedly $107,500. This includes Glover who recently challenged Jon Jones and main evented a PPV.

I've never been one to really complain about fighter pay but this really does highlight a big problem. When a guy like Tim Kennedy who wasn't the most high profile, charismatic or exciting fighter back then and he manages to make more money in one fight than 26 fighters AND he does it in Strikeforce.

Dana was correct in saying that sponsor logos all over tights should have never happened in the first place but he thought it was the right thing to do to get fighters extra money during the early days of the UFC. It shouldn't have happened but it doesn't change that it DID happen and guys made a lot more money than they do now.

Luke Thomas also brought up a good point that UFC was all about cleaning up the look of the sport and presentation yet there are more logos in the octagon than ever. They didn't clean up the look, they just took control of the sponsors and took money out of the fighters pocket and put it into theirs.

What can the UFC do at this point to make up the difference? Should they? I think they are in real danger of getting unionized. They just need a big star like GSP to pull it off.

all fighters, even the rousey's and mcgregor's of the world, have to be in on this. if not, it won't ever work. and it's going to be hard to convince these stars essentially go on strike, in order to make this happen. they're making tons of cash in the present, so they'll have to give that up.
 
Sure, but they are losing a lot of money for every fight left on their contract.

The UFC seems to have fucked up royally, if any credence is to be given to statements like Kennedy's here or made by Cerrone and Schaub previously.

If good fighters really were making between $50-100K in sponsorship money each fight then:
a. They weren't starving, as some on this site would have us believe.
b. The UFC completely misassessed how much sponsorship fighters bring in when making the Reebok deal.
c. If, as they claim, they did this for the fighters, then they screwed up very badly and should try to get out of the deal.
d. Even if they did this for UFC interests, which I have no problem with, it seems they undersold themselves.

Correct. I feel they really undervalued their fighters and in typical stupid asshole responses Dana puts out giving his opinion on shit he knows nothing about Schaub making big money from sponsors, the fact is even if Schaub isn't making that much money (north of 600K I've heard-maybe inflated somewhat) no one in the UFC bothered to ask the fighters. Schaub if he does indeed make more money than they would have paid him through Reebok obviously makes it through his podcast. It's like the UFC doesn't believe fighters can be business men themselves.

I almost can find it easy to believe that FOX execs possibly mentioned something about needing uniforms to showcase the fighters on the FOX shows. Why else would the UFC go with a joke of a brand like Reebok? Seriously when Nike was sponsoring both Anderson and JDS in Brazil it should have been a tip off to Dana that perhaps there would be more interest from corporate entities other than Reebok. The UFC hopefully ends up ONLY hurting THEIR brand and not the fighters.
 
If another promotion pays better, eventually the UFC will lose fighters they want to keep.
Happened in the PRIDE days. Zuffa didn't have the fighter pay to keep their champions and they all jumped ship to fight in PRIDE to make more money.

I doubt anything that extreme will happen as the UFC gets more exposure than Bellator, but the middling guys with popular fan bases might eventually jump ship if they aren't paid properly.

I'm not even worried about a situation like this the UFC is going to outbid Bellator for everyone they feel is worth it. Everyone else they'll let go ala Phil Davis.
 
I'm not even worried about a situation like this the UFC is going to outbid Bellator for everyone they feel is worth it. Everyone else they'll let go ala Phil Davis.

They're going to have to outbid enough to cover the loss of sponsorship money too though, which means they might lose out on a fair number or decide to change the sponsorship situation so they dont have to keep paying the difference themselves
 
They're going to have to outbid enough to cover the loss of sponsorship money too though, which means they might lose out on a fair number or decide to change the sponsorship situation so they dont have to keep paying the difference themselves

Nah if the UFC is ripping the fighters off as bad as everyone think they are they'll be able to give everyone they want a pay raise. They'll cut into their own profits but in a situation like this it's worth it.
 
It's funny because a lot of the anti-UFC people are jumping all over this, but they were the same people years ago who said fighters couldn't make enough from sponsors to live.
 
Are we going to continue to point to when there were tons of sponsors over paying to get a insignificant pop on a premium cable channel? I wonder how many of those sponsors are still in business.
 
like boxing?

does boxing have a union?

Yeah, other boxers helped Kovalev to earn zero in his fights year before the title fight.

Boxing fans were also very upset about all of this.
 
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