Is the UFC pay and bonus system fair?
The Ultimate Fighting Championship needs to make a new year’s resolution. It’s time for this juggernaut of MMA to start…
The Ultimate Fighting Championship needs to make a new year’s resolution. It’s time for this juggernaut of MMA to start paying fighters what they’re worth and stop abusing the bonus system to reward just a few fighters instead of upping the ante for all combatants.
Fight of the night, knockout of the night, and submission of the night bonuses all help to pad the paychecks of some of the best fighters in the league.
That’s all well and good. The issue is not due to the fact that the bonuses exist in the first place. It’s actually a novel idea that also seems to inspire more fighters to put on a show in the cage and increase the production value of each card. The problem stems from the fact that all too often talented competitors who fight and train just as hard as bonus winners get the shaft and go home with too little to show for their incredible efforts.
The UFC recently decided to make the fight of the night bonus a fan-favorite decision at UFC 124. Dana White quickly killed any chance of that experiment being repeated when fans gave the nod to the night’s main event instead of the fight White thought to be the clear winner.
The UFC is a league where the biggest names get the biggest paydays as it is, so giving Georges St. Pierre and Josh Koscheck each a $100,000 fight of the night bonus in addition to what was most likely a six-figure base paycheck already (fight purses for this card have not been released) — didn’t make much sense. Dana White derided the choice of the voting public after the show was over and pointed out that Matt Riddle and Sean Pierson’s three-round war was more worthy of the fight of the night mantle given to the one-sided main event’s fighters.