Why do people care about fighter pay?

[Mike]

its pretty clear why the UFC want to keep pay as low as possible, as much as people like to bang on about fighter pay, when you give people a large amount of money, their desire to keep training and work there assess off greatly diminishes, especially in combat sports

just look at McGregor as an example, as soon as he started to make stupid amounts of money, his whole life went off the rails, he has fought about 5 times in 7 years and half of those have been losses, he certainly isnt the hungry fighter he once was, and the UFC understand that

Bullshit, they're just cheap because the fighters have no leverage. Lots of boxers make more in one fight than most MMA fighters make in their entire career, and they don't all just retire after their first big payday.

 

[Mike]

The Heavies is ass.

I mean it's only been this way for twenty years lmao. It'll be ok.

 

[Doctor Grudge]

Bullshit, they're just cheap because the fighters have no leverage. Lots of boxers make more in one fight than most MMA fighters make in their entire career, and they don't all just retire after their first big payday.

yeah...high pay if anything would make fighters careers longer. people retire earlier in sports that pay less for obvious reasons.

 

[Substance Abuse]

I mean it's only been this way for twenty years lmao. It'll be ok.

I feel like it's worse now.

I'm just getting old, lol.

 

[Dana's Moonface]

No idea, maybe virtue signalling?

Why the fuck do I care what tattooed thugs get paid?

They could get paid 5 dollars or 50 million, makes little difference to me

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

simple question out of pure curiosity.
I’m not disagreeing it’s too low. It is definitely too low.

Can anyone tell me why they care though? Is it about opposing the rich and powerful in a general sense?





My opinion: I personally don’t care because like, it doesn’t affect me. If I was going to lobby for higher pay, these famous athletes who earn above median income would not be the top professions on my list. I’m not even sure they respect the average person anyway or are amazing people, so I don’t feel morally obliged.

Bc they are karens who don t know shit about fighting so it gives them something to moan about.

 

[burningspear]

I would like the guys who provide my entertainment to be happy, a strange concept I know.

 

[Mike]

I feel like it's worse now.

I'm just getting old, lol.

You and me both lmao. Commence the old man yelling at clouds phase of my life, I'm ready.

 

[Substance Abuse]

You and me both lmao. Commence the old man yelling at clouds phase of my life, I'm ready.

 

[egk]

Higher fighter pay means better athletes become fighters which equates to better entertainment for the fans. Does anybody really like watching most of the fat slobs at HW?
What interests me more is why do so many people seem to care about the fighters private lives? Do they like daytime soap operas too?

 

[treelo]

That's all well and good but in the antitrust law suit we learned that the UFC policy was to keep the fighters portion of the pot below 20% at all costs.
Paying people properly ruins them tell that to Floyd. That's some one size fits all bullshit.

you can show me 1 boxer that is earning massive money and i can show you 5 that have gone completely off the rails when they have started earning decent money, hundreds and hundreds of them

 

[GrantB13]

I support them making more but I'm not too concerned as a whole. I don't want situations where they feel like sitting out forever waiting the perfect fight that "makes sense" when that's just a code term for "easiest fight for the most money". I want them to make a comfortable amount given the health risks they take but I don't give a damn about them being super rich megastars. Trying to pretend that their money is your money or that bragging about their wealth translates to their fighting ability is dumb.

 

[nostradumbass]

The contracts are a much bigger issue than fighter pay, in my opinion. You can't be labeled an independent contractor while being treated like an employee. Its an exploitative way of doing business.

They're not treated like employees. Do you think it would be a better deal or a worse deal for them if their pay was switched to hourly or salary and they had to live near the office and show up for full time work hours? The UFC does have employees, but it's not the fighters.

 

[markg171]

Bullshit, they're just cheap because the fighters have no leverage. Lots of boxers make more in one fight than most MMA fighters make in their entire career, and they don't all just retire after their first big payday.

That's cause boxing also has mandatory fights and challengers.

Canelo's not fighting every few months because he gives a shit about who he's fighting or needs a payday anymore. He has to to avoid being stripped. He'd rather remain champion and all that clout than go down as being stripped or having refused to fight someone. He'll retire when he actually no longer feels like fighting.

I'm not saying it's the end all be all, but mandatory fights obviously plays a factor in why boxers are active and UFC fighters are not. We have arbitrary notions about when someone should be stripped, boxing has hard rules and governing bodies willing to enforce it.

Justin said a long time ago he's not fighting more than 2x a year as that's all he needs to do to pay his bills. Tell him he has to fight 3x a year and I bet he'd do it.

 

[Alacran]

They're not treated like employees. Do you think it would be a better deal or a worse deal for them if their pay was switched to hourly or salary and they had to live near the office and show up for full time work hours? The UFC does have employees, but it's not the fighters.

Exclusive contract, fight schedule, mandatory media obligations, uniform requirements, unilateral contracts, restrictive clauses, lack of bargaining power. WWE is structured the same way

 

[markg171]

Higher fighter pay means better athletes become fighters which equates to better entertainment for the fans. Does anybody really like watching most of the fat slobs at HW?
What interests me more is why do so many people seem to care about the fighters private lives? Do they like daytime soap operas too?

What data do you have to support that high level athletes like Federer, Lebron, Ronaldo, or Ohtanei would be willing to be punched in the face for money instead of playing their own sports?

Like the argument somewhat works for other combat sports, or hockey that has fighting or simply contact sports like rugby, football, etc, but completely fails to account that MMA is fighting which is always going to be a barrier to entry. The pay system is literally designed around "show pay" because of how nervous people get knowingly signing up for a fight and the obvious problem of people refusing to walk out for their fight. You'll only ever attract people willing to fight. Huge pay helps solve that sure as you can simply pay people to get their ass kicked, but it's always going to be a barrier to entry that no, some people really just don't want to take a head kick.

Also we'll never get the talent those sports get because those sports can be played at a young age. All other major sports have athletes with 15 years of training and competing under the belts by the time they're playing for real in college or nationally. MMA can't do this, no matter how cute your kids BJJ or karate class is. They can't be punched in the face for real, they can't have their arms broken for real. Well they could if we were willing to go back to more ancient understanding of training kids to be soldiers, but that'll never happen. So they don't get to competitively truly compete until later years than a lot of other sports.

Also MMA is a generalist sport, not a singular sport. You can get guys who come from a BJJ background sure, but they need to learn how to strike to if they'll ever make it anywhere in MMA and we've seen plenty of times specialists who couldn't figure that out. A football player can train his whole life simply to be a great quarterback, he doesn't need to play the other positions.

 

[markg171]

They actually make decent money now. People are mentally on stand by thinking it’s 2010 still. Motherfucking Bobby Green makes like 300k. Kevin Holland $356k. Granted that’s for show and win but still. How much you think the good fighters make if these popular yet fringe ranked dudes are getting paid.

GSP and Brock made $400k purses + PPV for their last fights prior to retirement. When they came out of retirement in 2017 their purses were $2.5M + PPV.

Can anybody even name the last time they actually saw someone earn $12/12K which is the minimum pay? I'm not exactly scraping the botton of the purse stories to see that, but they'd have had to have been an absolute completely nobody if they did.

Shit could be better in a lot of ways, but people pretending fighter pay hasn't come a long way are lying.

you can show me 1 boxer that is earning massive money and i can show you 5 that have gone completely off the rails when they have started earning decent money, hundreds and hundreds of them

Also when Ngannou fought Fury even Tyson said his $600k UFC purses, which were only that because he was purposefully fighting on an old contender contract from 2018 instead of the millions the UFC had repeatedly tried to re-sign him to, sounded about right for a new champion like Ngannou was.

Even Fury thought Ngannou didn't deserve anywhere near the purse he was getting for their fight. He just didn't care if they were equally going to massively overpay him too. It was a massive anomaly, not what Francis or even Tyson were worth.

We can also see that making that kind of money did make Ngannou into a diva and go off the rails. AJ gave him a reality check and sent him back to PFL nearly 3 years after his last MMA fight where he got to make another $8M. He rewarded PFL by afterwards saying he wasn't sure if he was going to fight for them again.

 

[Dreyga_King of Sherbums]

simple question out of pure curiosity.
I’m not disagreeing it’s too low. It is definitely too low.

Can anyone tell me why they care though? Is it about opposing the rich and powerful in a general sense?





My opinion: I personally don’t care because like, it doesn’t affect me. If I was going to lobby for higher pay, these famous athletes who earn above median income would not be the top professions on my list. I’m not even sure they respect the average person anyway or are amazing people, so I don’t feel morally obliged.

Have you heard of these things called empathy, morality, justice?

This is insane question to ask. It’s like asking why do people care about starving children in Africa or about curing cancer or freeing slaves in the third world.

Because we are human beings, what the fuck??

 

[markg171]

Have you heard of these things called empathy, morality, justice?

This is insane question to ask. It’s like asking why do people care about starving children in Africa or about curing cancer or freeing slaves in the third world.

Because we are human beings, what the fuck??

What are you doing about those things if you care so much

 

[nostradumbass]

Exclusive contract, fight schedule, mandatory media obligations, uniform requirements, unilateral contracts, restrictive clauses, lack of bargaining power. WWE is structured the same way

That's an independent contractor, hence the contractor part. Maybe you're thinking of freelancers or something? Employees have a fixed schedule of part time or full time hours and are paid either salaries or hourly. Fighters don't have regular schedules and turn downs dates, opponents and locations all the time.

Personal trainers in gyms are independent contractors, and similarly have uniforms, can't just take their clients to another gym, while the person at the desk is an employee, and there are probably also managers who are employees who have to keep a set number of office hours.