UFC fighters make more than boxers

[NoSmilez]

Source??

They counted the average released pay for the events. The numbers are definitely inflated or estimates.

 

[NoSmilez]

They are first and foremost putting money back into WME's pockets. Any "perks" for fighters, like the PI, are pocket change compared to that.

They were better compensated then fighters by probably around the 1950 and 1960s.

As per NY Times. In 1980, the average player's salary was $78,657. You are now telling me in the 50s they made more on average than UFC fighters now?

Here is another snippet from a NFL history site.
July 14, 1968: The first collective bargaining agreement is signed in underwhelming fashion for the players. “Highlights” include:

• Minimum salaries of $9,000 for rookies and $10,000 for veterans
• Exhibition pay of $50 per game

 

[avenue94]

As per NY Times. In 1980, the average player's salary was $78,657. You are now telling me in the 50s they made more on average than UFC fighters now?

Do you not grasp how inflation works. That sum is equivalent to $275,000 today. In other words, your average NFL salary in 1980 is almost equivalent to the UFC's standard title challenger fee. So yes, your average NFL player probably made the equivalent of what a top 10 UFC fighter earns fighting 3 times a year. Frankly, probably more comparable to a top 5 UFC fighter.

Also, keep in mind, setting aside dedications, contractors need to pay their employment tax, which means they are off the bat taking a 10 percent or so pay cut.

 

[flairleguccijoints]

These recent stats may surprise a lot of people who thinks boxers are paid more than UFC fighters.

The average UFC fighter made $160,022 in 2021, up from average earnings of $146,673 in 2020. 256 fighters (42%) earned six-figures in 2021, up from 219 fighters (38%) in 2020. 116 fighters (19%) made less than the average U.S. income ($25,000). The highest-paid UFC fighter was Conor McGregor, with $10,022,000 (without PPV bonuses).

The median salary for a professional boxer is $51,370, which may surprise many of you looking to become a professional boxer. This means that half of the professional boxers competing today earned less than this amount. Only the top 1% of all professional boxers earn more than a million dollars per year, the lowest 10% of all professional boxers earn less than $19,220 per year.

Lol a lot of effort to show you dont have a clue how to do an honest and proper comparison.
Comparing UFC, the highest level of MMA, to the median for all boxers.
Sherdumb back at it again….

 

[flairleguccijoints]

They have paid more for years now but too many people just listen to Jake Paul instead of actually doing their own research. Avenue94 to say Connor skews the average is laughable. Floyd Mayweather, Canelo, and the 3 heavyweight champions skew boxing numbers. Floyd handled his own promotion and that is why he went from making $1 million to $100 million per fight. Since Floyd is retired now I would love to hear how many American boxers make $1 million per fight. I am going to guess it is under 5 guys. I bet that the UFC has more than 10 guys.

Alright, tell me how much more the UFC has increased fighter pay.

Bro, do you understand what medians are?

So he went from making more money than UFC champs, while a prospect, to making way more money than UFC champs put together?

Rough napkin math on American fighters who have made more than $1 million a fight (Also, why just American, but sure)

UFC: Masvidal, Holloway (maybe), Aljo (if a PPV does well), Dustin Poirier, Usman, Jon Jones, Rose (maybe with a good headliner above her), Colby Covington (maybe), Miesha Tate, Nunes, Holly Holm, Stipe

Boxing: Andy Ruiz, Deontay Wilder, David Benavidez, Caleb Plant, Daniel Jacobs, Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Jermell Charlo, Errol Spend Jr, Terrence Crawford, Yordenis Ugas, Keith Thurman, Regis Prograis (maybe), Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney, Gervonta Davis, Ryan Garcia, JoJo Diaz (maybe), Shakur Stevenson , Jemel Herring, Leo Santa Cruz, Gary Russell Jr (maybe)

Each list might be missing a few but I got about twice as many boxers who've made a 7 figure payday and are still semi-active. You going to admit you don't know shit about pay in combat sports, or nah?

P.S. Keep in mind that the UFC is far more U.S. dominated than boxing, so this millionaire disparity gets even worse if we don't bias it toward just Murica.

Notice the crickets in response now He threw a bunch of inaccurate shit
against the wall.

 

[flairleguccijoints]

Simple question
How much does the average professional MMA fighter make, the whole goddamn point of the thread?
$64,138 lol.

Do you not grasp how inflation works. That sum is equivalent to $275,000 today. In other words, your average NFL salary in 1980 is almost equivalent to the UFC's standard title challenger fee. So yes, your average NFL player probably made the equivalent of what a top 10 UFC fighter earns fighting 3 times a year. Frankly, probably more comparable to a top 5 UFC fighter.

Also, keep in mind, setting aside dedications, contractors need to pay their employment tax, which means they are off the bat taking a 10 percent or so pay cut.

There are idiots in abundance around here, comparing salaries from 40+ years ago.

 

[chardog]

This, it'd be helpful to have the average annual income of boxers to compare apples to apples.

i'd be interested in median vs median, probably real hard to get a solid number without invading people's privacy

 

[NoSmilez]

Do you not grasp how inflation works. That sum is equivalent to $275,000 today. In other words, your average NFL salary in 1980 is almost equivalent to the UFC's standard title challenger fee. So yes, your average NFL player probably made the equivalent of what a top 10 UFC fighter earns fighting 3 times a year. Frankly, probably more comparable to a top 5 UFC fighter.

Also, keep in mind, setting aside dedications, contractors need to pay their employment tax, which means they are off the bat taking a 10 percent or so pay cut.

10k in the 60s is around 70k when you adjust for inflation. How many times these people have to perform a year?

I don't know why I keep going in circles with this. This is a circle jerk where I agree that fighters are underpaid but realistically they cannot get the 30 million paychecks out nowhere. It is going to take time for the fighters to get paid more. UFC's best earnings to date but the parent company is still in red. They were close to bankruptcy during 2020.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/endeavor-posts-q4-loss-boosts-202942557.html
https://investor.endeavorco.com/new...arter-and-Full-Year-2021-Results/default.aspx

 

[avenue94]

10k in the 60s is around 70k when you adjust for inflation. How many times these people have to perform a year?

I don't know why I keep going in circles with this. This is a circle jerk where I agree that fighters are underpaid but realistically they cannot get the 30 million paychecks out nowhere. It is going to take time for the fighters to get paid more. UFC's best earnings to date but the parent company is still in red. They were close to bankruptcy during 2020.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/endeavor-posts-q4-loss-boosts-202942557.html
https://investor.endeavorco.com/new...arter-and-Full-Year-2021-Results/default.aspx

Yes, and they also don't have to pat for training, which confuses me as to why you are trying to compare independent contractors in combat sports to employees in team sports.

Do you know why WME was almost bankrupt?

Also you won't ever see me asking for fighters to get 30 million outside of a few cases.

 

[DOMMA]

Lol a lot of effort to show you dont have a clue how to do an honest and proper comparison.
Comparing UFC, the highest level of MMA, to the median for all boxers.
Sherdumb back at it again….

Yea, a lot of effort, I cut and pasted two paragraphs, it would have taken you an hour. It is a forum, I shared some info. from an article I thought was interesting. Relax.

 

[chardog]

Biggest PPV of all time or close to it, MayMac…. Under card guys fighting for $5k and under. View attachment 920060
You will regularly see under card boxers fighting for $200-800.

It’s hard to compare directly to UFC, but in MMA you see that also in regional fights.

It’s gotten to where people just say “UFC pays shit”. They don’t. They pay more than any other MMA promotion. What the real knock is that the UFC pays a shit percentage of their overall earnings to their fighters.

it could be a number of reasons why they pay a shit percentage

employee pay?
structural reasons?
marketing?

it's kind of like the american vs import car, imports generally put a large emphasis on R&D, americans on marketing. R&D is like money dedicated to making a car better, marketing adds no value to the car...............

is bellator/eagle fc/one fc all that different from the UFC in pay? possibly different business models than boxing. Chances I see a low level boxing fight is almost zero, a low level mma fight, often, and that's probably not by chance.

 

[613]

They have paid more for years now but too many people just listen to Jake Paul instead of actually doing their own research. Avenue94 to say Connor skews the average is laughable. Floyd Mayweather, Canelo, and the 3 heavyweight champions skew boxing numbers. Floyd handled his own promotion and that is why he went from making $1 million to $100 million per fight. Since Floyd is retired now I would love to hear how many American boxers make $1 million per fight. I am going to guess it is under 5 guys. I bet that the UFC has more than 10 guys.

According to what is posted by TS, 1% of boxers make over a million a year. 1% of pro boxers is 200. So 200 pro boxers make over a million a year. There are 250 UFC fighters and they make an average of 160k.

Boxing pays significantly higher than the MMA. The only way you can make the UFC look like they pay more is through some REALLY manipulative cherry picked stats that the "do your own research" morons fall for

 

[613]

Why is this news? I thought it would be obvious. This fighter pay stuff is a bit overblown. These guys are making more than ever. I do agree that they are underpaid but this is slowly changing.

It compares median vs averages lol. It takes the 250 UFC fighters average pay and compares it to the median pay of every pro boxer (like 20,000).

What TS posted actually shows Boxing pays significantly more if you look past the cjerry picked manipulative shit in it

 

[Doctor Grudge]

I dont get why this is an argument lol. Boxers do make more money than MMA guys.

Saying stuff like low level boxers do not make money adds nothing to the discussion, as low level MMA guys make just as little.

Obviously we are talking about headliners. Like, pro wrestlers and tennis players do not make a lot of money either, but obviously when talking about the top 100-200 that is different.

Comparing fighters people actually heard of and are of relevance, ie, headliners - boxers make more money than MMA fighters. That isn't debatable. That means boxers make more than MMA guys. If you're a champion, fighting a champion or an ex champion you have likely gotten at least ONE million dollar purse - that does not exist in MMA for the most part, where in boxing that is the standard.

There are 17 weight classes in boxing (quick google search, too lazy to count it up)

There are 4 major governing bodies

17x4= 68 world title opportunities. This does not include the WBA "Regular" champion who makes good money or the lineal/Ring champion who is often a big name and makes a ton of money.

Some boxers have more than one title, but they obviously had to beat someone to get that. There are also mandatory title defenses, so even guys who are not good enough to be world champs will get title shots, which equate to good purses for them (if against a nobody champ they get paid about as much as a UFC champion/#1 contender, if against say the heavyweight champ they will get a million dollars).

It's not really close....you have like 12 different titles at any time you can chase (a lot of weight classes available). You can win a title independent of your promotion. You can get a % of the PPV buys. You can self promote yourself.

Even regional champions (which do not really exist in MMA) can make 100,000. Yes, if you are just the British champion, and reasonably unknown you can make about 100,000 dollars - if you are a big prospect, you can get paid half a mil - the British boxing champion can make as much as the UFC world champion. Think about that.

It's obvious that boxers make more money than MMA fighters...look at how the industry works. MMA barely has any infrastructure.

 

[NoSmilez]

It compares median vs averages lol. It takes the 250 UFC fighters average pay and compares it to the median pay of every pro boxer (like 20,000).

What TS posted actually shows Boxing pays significantly more if you look past the cjerry picked manipulative shit in it

TBH I didn't look at the exact data that the TS showed. Of course you can't compare averages with medians. I was going off by the title. I just know by experience that regional boxers don't make much. It's the same with MMA fighters and MT guys. You also can't compare an entire sport to a league. There are also a lot of guys we never heard of making 500 to 2000 a fight in untelevised fights.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

I actually disagree on this. Increasing pay isn't so much as attracting new talent (sure, maybe a little from amateur wrestling, which has declined in recent years in mma as pay in that are increased), but retaining existing talent. You can make the high end pay in mma comparable to say football, but combat sports requires far too niche a skillset and durability than other sports.

Nah I think attracting talent is MMA's biggest problem, most obviously the cultural the UFC have of depending on fighters building themselves up in small orgs for several years to get signed.

Thast a big barrier to a lot of potential talent moving to MMA, its one thing to take a decent offer from the UFC and then switch, its another to have to spend years in the small time just hoping the UFC might be interested.

Really the UFC's favorued talent bases have always been areas were fighters have limited earning potential like US wrestling or more recently sambo from the causasus which makes them more likely to make such a switch, someone earning good money as a pro in another sport or with good state funding is much less likely to switch.

I think this is really the key to why "evolution" has tended to be a fraud, people point to how sucessful the UFC has become but the problem is the increase is UFC earnings has not resulted in a similar increase in investment in talent. The UFC really has been run as a cash cow from TUF onwards maximising profits and making as little investment as possible.