Ultimate fighters hit below the belt

[Ktulu]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1156801811445

[Roidie McDouchebag]

Dana White for assassination.

[Teh El Macho]

Kinda makes you wonder if the UFC really will have any future. With pays like that???

Granted, the vast majority of boxers make meager earnings, but they can at least a realistic dream of making $$$$ if they are good. For MMA fighters, that's a dream that may never come true :(

[GoldenJonas]

Jeremy Lappen, chief executive officer of the WFA, was escorted out of the building at UFC 61: Bitter Rivals, despite having a ticket given to him by Ken Shamrock, whom he used to manage and who was fighting.

Damn....that's some old school mafioso shit right there.:wtfgif9fr

[Scrapper]

This is how it always starts, and White knows this. He will milk his monopoly for as long as he can and make as much money as possible. Then when the backlash hits critical mass, he will start to pay more to keep the UFC's elite image.

It's a business, if he doesn't show big profits, than the Fertita brothers will get someone who will. In ten years we will have 4 or five major organizations, and fighters will negotiate inter-association fight deals one at a time. All this while still retaining multi fight contracts with individual organizations or promotions. It's an evolution that took boxing a hundred years, be patient, people.

[Teh El Macho]

Damn....that's some old school mafioso shit right there.:wtfgif9fr

No shit!!!!!


Scrapper, I hope you are right dude. Most likely you are... it must suck balls to try to be a pro under the current conditions, though. We gotta give props to those who step onto the ring for almost no $$$; that's love for the sport I tell ya.

[Roidie McDouchebag]

I think it'll get to be like boxing, the sanctioning bodies and promoters will be seperate entities. Right now, it's like the UFC is the WBC and Dana White is Don King...it'll change, the balance will shift, and the fighters will make their money.

[DJR]

Jeff Monson is in the anarcho-syndicalist union the Industrial Workers of the World . Maybe he should have a crack at organizing an MMA fighters union local.

Imagine crossing that picket line if they went on strike...

[Nate1481]

Imagine crossing that picket line if they went on strike...

Please tell me that the pun was intentional...

[patfromlogan]

Ruling class 1/0, Workers 0/1

[PizDoff]

Cool, this was on the The Star. Pretty much Toronto's largest newspaper.
Good find.

[DJR]

Here's a follow up story from the same reporter (this got picked up by the Globe and Mail and a bunch of other outlets as well)

UFC president defends pay structure
By NEIL DAVIDSON

(CP) - The president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship defended his organization's pay structure Tuesday, saying his fighters were happy with their piece of the mixed martial arts pie.

"Believe me when I tell you, brother, people aren't leaving me," Dana White said in an interview Tuesday. While declining to detail UFC's finances, he said his athletes were happy with their take. "We're a private company and our fighters make a lot of money, a lot of money," he added.

UFC 62: Liddell vs. Sobral card drew 10,419 to the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on Saturday, for a paid gate of $3,040,880 US.

The UFC made millions more off its pay per view, which cost $39.99 Cdn in Canada.

According to information provided Monday by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, the UFC paid the 18 fighters on the card a total of $407,000 US - with $250,000 of that going to light-heavyweight champion Chuck (The Iceman) Liddell for stopping Brazil's Renato (Babalu) Sobral in 95 seconds in the main event. Sobral earned $21,000.

White rejected figures from MMAWeekly.com, which follows the sport, that pay-per-view sales for UFC 60: Hughes vs. Gracie generated at least $23.97 million.

He declined to say what UFC's pay-per-view numbers are.

The Las Vegas Review Journal, however, has reported UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta saying that UFC 52: Couture vs. Liddell II in April 2005 did 320,000 pay per views, which would translate into more than $11 million US.

Asked about the UFC's profits from such pay-per-views, White said: "Everybody's happy."

"None of us are arguing, none of us are bitching and none of us are fighting. We get along with all of our fighters very well. They feel like they're part of a very happy family. Let me tell you what, I can sleep at night. I'm not in this for the money and I never was.

"We're a real business. We've got this thing rolling and we're thrilled, thrilled that these guys are able to make what they're making."

White cited middleweight champion Rich Franklin, a native of Cincinnati whose UFC deal calls for a basic fee of $18,000 per fight with another $18,000 for each win.

"Him and his wife just bought 15 acres of land and a big fat house that they just moved into," White said.

White also denied being responsible for having the head of the rival World Fighting Alliance ejected from the Mandalay Bay at UFC 61: Bitter Rivals. Jeremy Lappen was asked to leave by Mandalay Bay officials, White said, because he had people distributing flyers in the casino for a WFA event.

The UFC president said he "embraced" competition from rival organizations.

"These guys create the talent that's going to end up in my show some day. I've got no problem with these guys."

"I've made more millionaires in this business than anybody else has," White added.

But he said his fighters don't like their paydays being revealed.

"Because when people know what you make, it causes a lot of problems in your life."

[bad credit]

Yeah, MMA pay is a joke. You've got to train harder than a boxer (add kicking and grappling) or a kickboxer (add grappling) and yet you make a tenth the money, if lucky.

Things could be worse, though, you could train to be a ninja and then end up broke and jobless 'cause assassination is illegal. Yeah, just be glad MMA didn't get outlawed in all 50 states. Of course, we'd still have the Indian casino venues.

[TehDeadlyDimMak]

Yeah, MMA pay is a joke. You've got to train harder than a boxer (add kicking and grappling) or a kickboxer (add grappling) and yet you make a tenth the money, if lucky.

Things could be worse, though, you could train to be a ninja and then end up broke and jobless 'cause assassination is illegal. Yeah, just be glad MMA didn't get outlawed in all 50 states. Of course, we'd still have the Indian casino venues.

The good thing about MMA is that lots of kickboxers, boxers, and wrestlers that were dying out in their sports transitioned very successfully to MMA for one reason or another.

For instance, Cro Cop was never a K-1 Grand Prix champion, but he quickly found himself to be a contender for the Pride belt because he had what most other transitioning professional kickboxers didn't have, takedown defense. So MMA can be an alternative way to find success in combat sports.

Also, the UFC's pay is not reflective of the MMA community as a whole. According to some sources (NHB by Clyde Gentry) fighters in Japan can make as much as 5x on average as their American counterparts. Thus, the reason why so many American fighters make the commute to Japan to fight for Pride, Deep, etc.

[Roidie McDouchebag]

LOL@Dana the Sheister White spinning that shit.

Cool, this was on the The Star. Pretty much Toronto's GAYEST newspaper.

Fixed...much as I liked the article, it's true.