UFC featherweight Cub Swanson spoke recently with Kevin Iole for Yahoo Sports, ahead of his fight vs. Brian Ortega Saturday night in the main event of UFC Fresno. Frankie Edgar likely gets the next shot at division champion Max Holloway, as the fight was scheduled before injury pulled ‘The Answer’ from the fight, and Aldo stepped in. Looking at the UFC’s official rankings, the next likely fight for Swanson with a win Saturday is Aldo. Swanson would take the fight, but he wants to be paid better.
“I haven’t been [compensated correctly], and I feel all the fighters should be paid more,” he said. “I feel I was putting in my dues for a long time out of an ignorance of thinking, ‘I’m going to put in the work and I’ll be taken care of.’ I feel I’ve been paid good, but when you see guys like Conor, guys like Nate Diaz, who are hardly fighting and make a couple of [million] each fight, man.
I’ve trained side-by-side with all these boxers and they make more money than me. My boxing coach [Joel Diaz] makes more money than I do making a small percentage of one of his boxers’ purses. That put it into perspective, especially when I’ll look at a boxer and realize that he doesn’t train harder than me. For everything I’ve already done and what I bring to the table, and what a lot of us do, we should be taken care of more long-term, that’s all.
Swanson was asked if given their titles and PPV sales, McGregor and Rousey deserve their millions.
That’s very fair, but I also think both of them were very pampered, he said. You know I’ll take slack for saying that, but it’s very true. I tell young fighters this all the time. Me and Ortega both, we’re just another fighter from California. We’re not from a country that doesn’t have any other fighters and so we don’t have an entire country backing us up. So we’re not an easy sell from a promoter’s perspective.
Fighters like that, they get hand-picked opponents their entire career. Guys like me, they’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s winning, but let’s give him tougher and tougher and tougher and tougher guys.’ That’s literally how they book my fights. It’s a lot harder for somebody like me to have an undefeated career than somebody like a Conor or a Ronda.
One, they’re being compensated above and beyond. Two, their opponents were picked at the right time and it was the right person. When [McGregor fought] Chad Mendes, that fight, [Mendes] wasn’t even training when Aldo pulled out. Five other people were training and they went with the guy who is the least in shape. Same thing happened with Nate Diaz. Five other people signed on the dotted line and Nate Diaz got the fight because he was the least in shape. There was too much money to be lost. It’s simple.
