John Cholish retires and criticises fighter payment

Cholish had a relative short career and is now retired from the fight business with only 29 years of age. It doesn't suprise me that much because he has another good job at wall street and was doing MMA only as a hobby.

But what caught my attention was what he had to say about the fighter payment. Here's a quote...

"At the end of the day, it's hard. I have great coaches that take time off and travel. They deserve money, as well. To be completely honest, on a fight like this, I'm losing money to come down here. Flights, hotel rooms, food -- and that doesn't even cover the cost of the time I have to pay for my coaches for training. It's funny because people talk about the fighters, but at the same time there's camps and coaches behind the fighters that you don't even see. So if a fighter is having a tough time making ends meet, how do you think his coaches are doing?" - link

Do you guys think the fighters on the lower level even in the UFC get payed enough ? There was a Bleacher Report article (I know I know) not too long ago about the published UFC contract of Eddie Alvarez. Some interesting thoughts/facts from this article....

"As a private company, the UFC doesn't have to report its revenues, cash flow or profit margins to anyone. According to a recent profile in Fast Company, the promotion makes in the neighborhood of $600 million per year, though Fertitta says that number is overstated. The UFC is worth north of $2 billion, making it a more valuable property than even the legendary New York Yankees, Major League Baseball's perpetual cash machine.Yet despite this success, Fertitta told ESPN that in the seven years since the company started regularly turning a profit, they have paid out just $250 million total to the athletes" - link


Do you guys think something has to change to build more talent or just help those guys out that are fighting on the low end of divisions ? I mena I know of several UFC fighters who have jobs or need jobs to pay the bills. Mike Russow, Ivan Menjivar, Robbie Peralta to name a few.

Shouldn't they be as soon as they reach the UFC level be able to pay all their bills and spend all their focus on the fight game?

What ya think Tapology?

Nate has over $1.2 million in REPORTED earnings from the UFC over his career. Being an exciting fighter and winning the OTN bonuses really pays off. What one can deduce from this information is that if a fighter is an exciting draw = getting paid, being a boring undercard fighter = not getting paid. I'm sure he gets fat royalty checks from all the Metal Mulisha gear too.

http://mma-manifesto.com/ufc-fighter-salary-database/salary-main/ufc-career-fighter-earnings.html

@curt

Yes 50k for a UFC title fight that's pretty weak, your point is what exactly? The numbers I posted are from the Fox card after that...

@Anik

aha ok I see and I agree with you.

The UFC could and should definitively pay more, but at the end of the day the fighters with a lot of value have to stick together and make that happen, they could change things around. No one else but they could do it...

Will they? I have my doubts.

Well that's 1.2 million for 18 UFC fights, sorry but that doesn't sound very awesome. And it would be much less if he hadn't gotten those 10 bonuses which probably made 3/4 of his payments.

To be honest I think in a perfect world he should have earned those 1,2 mil in the Benson Henderson fight alone. I also think the UFC could afford that.

* Edited at 05.20.2013, 12:46 PM ET *

Why would the UFC pay fighters like Cholish more? How many butts do those fighters put in seats? How many PPV's do they sell?

The UFC pays them, gives the the stage to maximize sponsor money and if they get cut from the UFC they'll usually get sweeter deals in other organization even if they didn't win a fight in the octagon.

Once you win a fight or two and start building up interest in your fights, you get paid more. Pure and clean business.

No way should the UFC pay any fighter who's ranked under 30 in his division more than 4K-8K per fight. That would just be stupid.

Cholish is talking about the UFC's income? Are he or fighters of his caliber any part of that income? No. They're working their way up to become those fighters and their salary isn't supposed to be linked in any way with the UFC's income. They get paid what their manager gets for them while negotiating with the UFC (which is basically their worth in a capitalist economy).

If you're a top prospect or already have some sort of a fanbase, you'll probably get more, but if you're relatively unknown then you're worth less from a card cash point of view.

Cholish is on the MMA Hour right now...

http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/5/20/4345206/the-mma-hour-with-rory-macdonald-gray-maynard-stephen-thomson-holly

Honestly, regardless of how successful the fighters are the fact that they are in the UFC in the first place means that they're reasonably successful in their profession. The UFC should pay these guys enough money yearly to be able to live properly for ****'s sake; all I ask is between 50-100Gs for a fighter per year under contract.

Paying a top level athlete 24Gs a year is ******* ABSURD. The UFC spends only 15% on their fighters, 15 FREAKING PERCENT. THAT'S CRAZY. Even doubling that would still be considerably lower than most sports.

* Edited at 05.20.2013, 1:34 PM ET *

No offense to Cholish but he's a dime a dozen dighter. There are tons of guys just as skilled waiting for that spot willing to fight for that money. 

Sure UFC has huge revenue but fighters aren't the only peopl working for them. They have people who work in production, putting these fights on tv. They have offices around the world with marketing departments getting peoples names out there selling the product. Who knows how many hundres of people they have on staff.

Anik is dropping the truth, honestly how can you even argue that logic ???

Cholish just said he had to pay taxes anyway, and didn't make any money with his fights in Canada and Brazil in fact he lost some. This can't be right...

@Bigj383 And you're speaking like as if the NFL, NBA or NHL don't? Sure the UFC handles their own production and that costs more but still, 15% is absurd.

Doubling that would go a long way and the UFC would still be able to handle their production. They're being greedy because they know they can.

Not touching the subject on Cholish.

Fighters do get paid too little.

Dong Hyun Kim has been verbal about this. He says he hardly makes any money at all fighting in the UFC. Kim said in an interview that the UFC pays his flight from South Korea to wherever it is he's fighting and pays the flight and hotel for 1 other corner man, Kim has to pay the flights and hotel fees for the other corner men he brings along with him. Plus they book the flight and hotel for 2 or 3 days before the fight, so if Kim wants to change the flight date to avoid jetlag as much as possible, Kim has to pay the extra fees for the flight change and the longer hotel stay.

For a company Dana White cluelessly claims is bigger than Football, they don't pay their fighters enough.

The fighters pay and the fact you'll likely never make millions in it like other sports such as boxing, basketball, football, heck and even pro-wrestling or at least WWE affects MMA's credibitlity when compared to the major mainstream sports and it doesn't matter if some fighters are sponsored by Nike, Coca Cola, Gatorade or any other big name mainstream brand since the fighters make so little money.

I wonder how many people that ***** about fighter pay watch the PPVs on a stream? 

Every single Tapology poster can watch the PPV on streams and that still won't make a dent in the UFC's pocket.

Every single Tapology poster can pay for the PPV and the UFC still won't increase the amount they pay fighters..

Thumbs up for Grizzly he gets it...

@benjaminbrandt That is irrelevant because there's a ****load of people who watch PPVs on streams and despite this, the UFC still makes 600 million a year but only spends around 40 million on fighters.

I'm not asking for anything crazy; I just want fighters to be able to be paid enough to keep one ******' job. The fighters deserve that for pretty much giving the UFC their life.

I'm not asking for them to be compensated. I don't want low-level fighters to be paid a ****load of money like major sports athletes, I'm just asking for them to be paid enough to survive with one job.

Is the $600M gross revenue or net profit?   

The UFC does pay most of their fighters more than most other organization, but that doesn't really help them on a mainstream sports level platform.

Also there's some fighter who get paid more fighting elsewhere than in the UFC.

Take Bibiano Fernandes for example. He signed with ONE FC over the UFC because the contract he was offered paid him more than the contract he was offered by the UFC.

If the UFC wants to be recognized as a mainstream sport, they need to start paying their fighters like mainstream sports.