Why ESPN's Slanderous Video on UFC Fighter Pay Is Completely Wrong

ESPN brands themselves as the “worldwide leader in sports.” Typically this means coverage of huge sports like the NFL all the way down through sports as unique as Strong Man competitions and poker.

Their coverage is usually interesting and even entertaining. It’s what has made them the man on campus for years now.

But ESPN should be completely ashamed of their recent story that could only be described as a hit piece on the mixed martial arts promotion known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Not only is this piece entirely one-sided despite its halfhearted attempt to include UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, it is also incredibly and I would say intentionally misinformed for the benefit of creating a more interesting piece.

There are so many ridiculous points in the ESPN piece that it would take hours to explain just how bad it really is. But there are a few things that I decided cannot wait and need to be responded to immediately.

With that said, let’s take a closer look at some of the biggest loads of B.S. that were presented in ESPN’s video on UFC fighter pay. 

'Fighters Make THIS Amount'

How many times do we have to hear from fighters that everything they earn isn’t put in the official paperwork before we start to really listen to them?

Throughout the piece they did, ESPN repeatedly presented fighter pay as being too low, when there is no real evidence that proves it whatsoever.

According to the official pay records, recent UFC 142 main-eventer Alistair Overeem made approximately $265,000 as a base pay for his most recent fight, with an additional $121,000 in bonuses earned.

As good as that sounds, that’s not even close to the amount that Overeem actually received.

The former Strikeforce heavyweight champion also received a $1 million signing bonus, spread out over his first three fights ($333,333 per fight). This alone would mean that his actual pay was almost double what was reported...and that doesn’t even mention the substantial amount of money he made on a percentage of the pay-per-view buys.

According to Fertitta, 29 current UFC fighters make a percentage of pay-per-view revenue. Alistair Overeem is one of those fighters.

As part of his contract, Overeem made $2 per pay-per-view buy if the event reached 500,000 viewers. In reality, the event hit approximately 800,000 buys, meaning an additional $1.6 million in pay for “The Demolition Man.”

When it was all said an done, Alistair Overeem conservatively made well over $2 million for a fight that he “officially” made less than $300,000 for...and that’s not even counting the sponsors he had, some of which he would have never had a chance at landing without the Zuffa machine.

'Fighter’s Can’t Speak Up'

One of the most clearly misleading aspects of the piece ESPN did was the way that they presented an idea that if fighters speak up, that they will be fired. According to the piece, one “high level” fighter essentially said that if he spoke up about fighter pay, that he’d be fired.

Whoever made that statement, if they weren’t being lead into saying it, was at the very least seriously misinformed. All he needs to do is ask one of his most high-profile co-workers.

Former UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz has not only spoken up about fighter pay in the past, he has done so while simultaneously bashing UFC President Dana White both in the media as well as leading up to and immediately after his fights.

Ortiz and the promotion were in an ongoing battle for many years about how much fighters were paid, but as he now nears the end of his career, we can look back and see that not only has the company remained loyal to Ortiz, he hasn’t fought outside of the UFC since his third professional fight

If Ortiz wasn’t canned for the often times outrageous comments he made, then why would someone get fired for simply saying that they don’t think they get paid enough?

'Lower-Level Fighters Don’t Make Enough Money'

On the surface, the amount that newer UFC fighters make looks minuscule. Guys who make fight purses and $6,000 to fight and $6,000 to win aren’t making a living fighting...yet.

It’s true that many lower-level fighters don’t make a ton of money, but the possibility of making a good amount is there. Not only are fighters able to make their fight purses, but they are also every bit as eligible to win “Fight of the Night,” “Knockout of the Night” or “Submission of the Night” bonuses.

Hitting just one of those bonuses could be enough to support a fighter’s family for an entire year.

But even if it was true that newer fighters were fighting for peanuts, the plain reality is that no one buys events or even watches free television specifically to watch the lower-level fighters.

The fact that the UFC pays undercard fighters as much as they do is a display of how much they respect them for what they do. They don’t even need to pay them as much as they do.

One thing that is often also neglected when speaking about new fighter pay is the opportunities these competitors have to secure the level of sponsorships that they could never dream of in the smaller promotions. It might not be huge money yet, but even the low-level UFC sponsors can be a decent payday for these fighters who would otherwise be struggling to make anything near that.

Fighter Pay Relating to Total Revenue

It’s unfair to directly compare MMA to other sports.

Even though the UFC’s buyrates fluctuate based on who is fighting on the card, Zuffa has put on fight cards without huge names and still done very well in the past. It’s the UFC brand that has been the driving force in making them so successful.

We may never know what the actual numbers are regarding how much the fighters make in comparison to the total revenue of the company, but the reality is that it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not fair to compare the sports given their histories as well as the point that individual sports like MMA and team sports like the NFL are completely different in almost every feasible way.

Zuffa could survive even without having the majority of the top talent in the world at their fingertips. Quite frankly, they’ve done it before and there is little reason to believe that they wouldn’t be able to do it again.

But Zuffa understands that in order to maximize their profits, they need to work with the fighters to find an acceptable pay scale. But considering the rate of fighters leaving by choice, it’s safe to say that they’ve found the sweet spot, and then some. 

The Truth of the Matter

The bottom line is that the mixed martial arts is a business.

This is a company that paved the way for the entire sport to be legalized, opened the door for money to be made and kicked down the ridiculous claims from Senator John McCain that MMA was “human cockfighting.”

Is Zuffa the perfect company? No. Is UFC the perfect promotion? No.

But for ESPN to continually put out intentionally misleading pieces about the promotion is unfair and flat out irresponsible.

As you brand yourselves as the “worldwide leader in sports,” ESPN, you should be ashamed of yourselves for the way that you have covered the fastest growing sport in the world.