A Blow To the Pockets: Making Sense of the Big Differences in Fighter Salaries

Whenever the fighter payouts are released after a major card, there's usually a lot of outrage about how some fighters are not getting paid enough money. However, the announced payouts don't tell the entire story.

The most recent case of this was at the Strikeforce card, where top prospect Gegard Mousasi was listed as having received a bare $2,000, while Gina Carano led fighter payouts with $125,000.

What first needs to be understood is that the announced fighter pay includes only what money was paid out on that night, which might be far less than what the fighter actually earns.

In the exceptional case of Mousasi, it is necessary to understand that Mousasi is managed by M-1 Global, the same company that manages Fedor Emelianenko. So while his base pay was $2,000, Mousasi was probably paid much more through money or other arrangements made through M-1.

To further that point, consider that Emelianenko's pay for beating Andrei Arlovski was $300,000, while Arlovski earned $1.5 million for his unscheduled nap on the mat.

Most, or all of the money Arlovski received was included in that $1.5 million figure, while Emelianenko had many other considerations with M-1.

But let's consider other fighters as well.

A lot of people make a big deal of the fact that WEC fighters make far less money than UFC fighters.

This may be true, but it is also true that WEC stars like Urijah Faber and Miguel Torres have received money for their promotional efforts that are not included in their fighter purses.

As for the rest of the WEC fighters, it is simply an issue of Zuffa only paying according to supply-and-demand.

If WEC fighters could make more money competing for other organizations, they would simply have signed elsewhere.

Of course, Zuffa benefits more toward the end of a fighter's contract, when the fighter is making less than what they could elsewhere, but that aspect is true of many jobs.

Furthermore, a large amount of a fighter's improved worth is due to the amount of money that a fight promotion like the WEC puts into promoting a fighter.

I am consistently baffled by how many people still find these fighter purses unfair. Especially considering that most of the people complaining are otherwise happy capitalists.

Paying market value is simply a reality of capitalism, so to become furious about it shows that people somehow seem to lose perspective on reality once something leaves one's own personal frame of existence.

Something kind of akin to being against people slaughtering animals for food, while enjoying a good T-bone steak.

The last point I would like to make about fighter pay concerns the big boys of the UFC.

A number of the big-name fighters in the UFC, including fighters like Georges St-Pierre, B.J. Penn, Randy Couture, and Brock Lesnar receive a portion of the pay-per-view revenue, above and beyond their fighter purses.

During his contract dispute, Randy Couture alleged that he was not being paid fairly by Zuffa. Because of this, the UFC opened its books to reveal that Couture had in fact been paid millions in the past year alone.

It is believed that Couture received in the neighborhood of $3 million for his fight with Brock Lesnar, and it is not unreasonable to believe that Lesnar would also have received a similarly large amount of money.

If anything, the money received by UFC stars such as GSP and Lesnar is more than market value, as no other promotion could afford to pay the millions that those fighters make.

Some people might count that as a good thing, as the UFC seems to be rewarding its biggest stars.

However, I'm sure there's some MMA socialists out there that will use these numbers to show once again how unfair the world is.