Weekend Fallout: Affliction Payouts, WEC Bonuses, ROH in HD, WWE Notes

I think I can speak for everyone in the combat sports community when I say I was a bit tired on Monday morning. Between Shane Mosely's shocking victory and Fedor Emelianenko's continued dominance on Saturday to Randy Orton's Royal Rumble win and Jamie Varner's controversial win Sunday, it was a long and fun two days.

And now, the fallout:

- The California State Athletic Commission has released the salaries from Saturday's Affliction Day of Reckoning event. The total payout was just over $3.3 million with Andrei Arlovski leading the way with $1.5 million. Fedor earned a base of just $300k, but the numbers don’t include bonuses for items like pay-per-view numbers and Fight of the Night.

Other notables include Josh Barnett's $500k (not counting win bonus), Vitor Belfort's $200k (w/$80k win bonus), Matt Lindland ($225k), and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira's $150k ($30k win bonuses).

- MMA Weekly has released the bonuses from WEC 38. Taking home $7,500 each were Jamie Varner, Donald Cerrone (Fight of the Night), Urijah Faber (Submission of the Night), and Jose Aldo (Knockout of the Night).

-Affliction's VP Tom Atencio has denied claims that Oscar De La Hoya was paid $5 million to be at the Saturday event, which is what HBO boxing analyst claimed during the Mosely fight. Both Jim Lampley and Merchant have been MMA detractors for a while now and the comment came off as petty and pathetic.

There has been no definitive answer from De La Hoya, but many combat sports sources are saying they have heard similar things. For Affliction's sake, I certainly hope not. Five Ounces of Pain's Sam Caplan did a nice column here on the subject.

- Caplan also reported that WEC Lightweight Champion Varner suffered a broken hand and broken foot in his fight with Cerrone and that he could be out for several months.

- Shifting gears to wrestling, Wrestling Observer/Figure 4 Online is reporting that Academy Award-nominated actor Mickey Rourke will appear at Wrestlemania in some angle with Chris Jericho judging on comments Rourke made at the SAG Awards Sunday. On Monday's WWE Raw, they alluded to the comments so something is definitely up.

- In a deal that has been discussed for weeks, Ring Of Honor will make its way to HDNet as the two announced a long-term deal has been signed. This obviously is pretty big news for ROH as their production levels will immediately increase as well as their exposure to a national audience. While not the reach of USA Network or Spike TV, this is pretty big news. No word on when the show will be airing—or filming—in HD.

- There is no major news coming out of last night's Rumble. Rob Van Dam was apparently brought in just for that show.

- More WWE employees are going to lose their jobs north of the border as Live Audio Wrestling reported that WWE is shutting down their Canadian office other than the sales department. Good luck to those now on the job market.

Josh Nason—josh [at] ropesringandcage [dot com]—has published MMA, wrestling and boxing blog Ropes, Ring and Cage.com since 2007. If you are using any content or recapping from this site, please include a link to www.ropesringandcage.com. Thank you for your support!