June 19 Strikeforce Challengers fighters salaries: Villasenor, Kennedy and Gurgel earn top pay

by Dann Stupp on Jun 26, 2009 at 6:10 pm ET

Headliner and main-event winner Joey Villasenor took home an event-high disclosed salary of $48,000 from the June 19 “Strikeforce Challengers: Villasenor vs. Cyborg” event at the ShoWare Center in Kent, Wash.

MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) recently requested and today received the list of disclosed paydays from the Washington State Department of Licensing’s Professional Athletics Program.

The total disclosed payroll for the Showtime-televised event was $198,500.

Other top earners included Tim Kennedy and Jorge Gurgel, who both earned $20,000 for their main-card victories. Nick Thompson and preliminary-card fighter Duane “Bang” Ludwig were next on the list with $15,000 each.

The list of official salaries includes:

Joey Villasenor: $48,000

def. Evangelista Cyborg: $10,000

Tim Kennedy: $20,000

def. Nick Thompson: $15,000

Jorge Gurgel: $20,000

def. Conor Heun: $4,000

Sarah Kaufman: $8,000

def. Shayna Baszler: $8,000

Luke Rockhold: $7,000

def. Corey Devela: $7,500

Dennis Hallman: $10,000

def. Justin Davis: $2,000

Brian Caraway: $6,000

def. Alex Zuniga: $1,000

Lyle Beerbohm: $6,000

def. Duane Ludwig: $15,000

Landon Showalter: $3,000

def. George Stork: $1000

Len Bentley: $1,500

def. Marques Daniels: $1,500

Steve Hadsel: $3,000

def. Taylor Roberts: $1,000

Now, the usual disclaimer: The figures do not include deductions for items such as insurance, licenses and taxes. Additionally, the figures do not include money paid by sponsors, which can oftentimes be a substantial portion of a fighter’s income.

In other words, these are simply base salaries reported to the commission and do not represent the total amounts earned by each fighter.

For complete coverage of the “Strikeforce Challengers: Villasenor vs. Cyborg” event, check out the MMA Events section of MMAjunkie.com.

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