ESPN Completely off Base: Sean McCorkle Gives the REAL Story of UFC Fighter Pay

ESPN’s hatchet-job on the UFC has been widely scrutinized by real MMA journalists and knowledgeable fans, but now a former UFC fighter has spoken out about how incredibly off base the network's Outside the Lines program really was.

“Big Sexy” Sean McCorkle took the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" to task on Tuesday morning when he went to the mixed martial arts forum The Underground and gave some real numbers regarding his UFC contract. He also compared the amount that he was actually paid to what his reported salary was.

“During my 3 fight stint with the UFC, they paid me exactly 150% what they were contractually obligated to pay me,” McCorkle wrote. “That is without a KO/Sub/Fight of the night bonus of any kind. That is even though I lost 2 of my 3 fights.”

In addition to the money he made from his official contract, McCorkle also made a substantial amount of money from discretionary bonuses in each of his three UFC fights.

“I am currently unaware of any pro sports franchise that pays any player more money than they are obligated to do so,” he added, noting that the extra bonus money he received was because the company believed he did such a good job promoting the fight.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence of how ridiculous the ESPN story was came when McCorkle explained how much money he made inside the UFC Octagon in comparison to what he made outside the Octagon:

"

To give you some more perspective on how fighting in the UFC compares to other organizations, this is how my career pay breaks down ranked dollar wise:

1. Stefan Struve

2. Mark Hunt

3. My other 12 non-UFC fights COMBINED

4. Christian Morecraft

"

While Zuffa’s dominance over the competition certainly plays into how much they have to pay their athletes, it is plain to see that Zuffa pays their fighters far more than outside organizations. Not only that, but competing on national television opens up a world of sponsorship opportunities that would never be possible in a regional promotion.

“Sponsorship-wise, during those three fights, I made an average each fight of about 75% of what I was contracted to be paid by the UFC,” McCorkle said. “So if my purse for fighting was $10,000 I made approximately $7,500 in sponsors on average [in addition to the fight purse and bonuses].”

To break things down simply, McCorkle also offered up an approximate formula on how to calculate how much a lower-level UFC fighter is really making.

“Take an average fighter's reported pay for a televised fight, double it, and you'll have a rough number of the amount he made on that fight,”  he explained. “As far as the main event fighters and big stars like Brock [Lesnar], Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, who share in the PPV revenue, the reported numbers are not even in the ballpark. GSP might be reported to make $250,000 when he in fact made $3-to-4 million.”

Only through this type of factual information from a former employee can any real data be examined.

It would be easy for McCorkle to be angry at the UFC for releasing him in 2011 and join in on the slander of the promotion, but he rose above that temptation and provided fans with the pure facts. Sean McCorkle deserves to be thanked by everyone in the MMA community for standing up and doing what is right.