UFC to Start Offering Bonuses for Fighters Tweeting

If you look at any other major sports league in North America, they will fine players for tweeting during team functions, games, anything.

The UFC, though, will go a different direction and go against those rules.

The UFC will, in fact, start offering a bonus for creative tweets and adding followers, UFC president Dana White announced at the UFC Fighter Summit.

Starting on June 1, fighters from both the UFC and Strikeforce will be divided up into four categories depending on the amount of followers they currently possess.

From those four categories, three will be chosen as winners at the end of each quarter and given a $5,000 bonus.

The judging criteria would include: who has gained the most followers since the start of the quarter, who wrote the most creative tweets and who had gained the highest percentage of new followers.

So now unlike the NBA and NFL, who have gone out of their way to punish the users of Twitter, the UFC will now endorse their fighters to actually use the now growing social media site.

That is a step that could make the sport more fan friendly and different from the norms of other leagues.

Also at the UFC Fighter Summit included seminars about the new Zuffa insurance policy for fighters, taxes, gambling and social media.

Present at the Summit were the majority of the 350 fighters currently on Strikeforce's and the UFC's rosters.

The Summit was held this week in Las Vegas.