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?

@benjaminbrandt hahaha you got me there.

I'm pretty sure it's gross revenue.

I don't have a problem with guys like Cholish getting paid what they are paid.  It's a try out contract, the UFC is giving an unproven guy a contract for more than he has ever made before as a fighter and a foot in the door at the number one promotion.  If Cholish was worthy of it, he would be getting paid more than what he initially signed for.  Instead he has retired and avoided his inevitable cut from the organization.  

* Edited at 05.20.2013, 2:20 PM ET *

You can't compare the NFL to the UFC. People have said UFC annual income matches the NY Yankees. 

Yankees have a 40 Man Roster with 25 active players. UFC claimed they have 475 fighters under contract, so with that you can expect to make 1/10 that of a yankee at best. But then you have to factor in UFC's overhead far exceeds that of the Yankees. UFC has to pay production, advertising, arena fees on a global level. So we don't know how much of the UFCs revenue goes to operating costs. Unless we know that we can't say fighters are underpaid.

UFC could have an operating cost of 300, 000, 000 before anyone gets paid we don't know. Because we are assuming everything. 

GSP makes more tha 1/10th of A Rods contract. 1/10th would be 2.75 million a year, GSP claims he makes about 4 million a fight.

GSP is also the #1 draw for the UFC. The amount he makes the UFC is astronomical. 

It's called bargaining power.  GSP has a lot of it.  John Cholish doesn't have any.

Getting into the nickel and dimes of how much the UFC makes is besides the point. The point is, they make far and away more money than any other promotion out there, and their low-tier fighters should be able to support themselves without the need for a second job if they fight 3-4 times in a year, win or lose. 

If you're cut, you're cut. Them's the rules.

But while you're in the UFC, being paid a total of $8k for winning a fight against a world-class opponent is absolutely ridiculous. 

People seem to forget that even the lowest-level fighters in the UFC are still in the top 1% of fighters worldwide.

Obviously the more fights you win and the more marketable you are, the more money you're going to make. With that said, prelim fighters should be viewed as an investment. Paying them what they deserve to make will allow them to get access to better training, have more time to train without having to worry about keeping up a steady day job, and ultimately put in better performances in the Octagon.

I agree with Anik and diele and whoever else thinks that UFC fighters are underpaid

some have said that why would the UFC should pay more money for a no name fighter?, it´s more likely that no one in Brazil bought his UFC ticket to watch Cholish, but without all the no name bottom of the barrrel fighters in the card ppl would´t pay 200 dlls or more for their ticket, would you pay 200 to watch only 3 fights? maybe in some cases you will, but not for any card, each of the fighters on every card the UFC has put together has contributed to take the UFC to were it is now, the UFC can aford to have better salaries for most of their fighters 16,000 or 24,000 dollars a year is a bad joke. I know that ont everybody can be a top earner nor that they should get paid the same but 8000 dollars as a base salary? shame on you UFC

Most athletes are overpaid. They make a living doing what they love. If they don't love it MMA is not for them.

yes  a lot of athletes are overpaid but not the UFC fighters and certainly  most MMA athletes don´t make a living out of MMA, most have other jobs so that they CAN make a living

Edit: Agree with skelliher, lower ranked fighter should be seen as an investment, the UFC should invest in it´s opwn talent and build fighters, if you don´t pay them enough so they can focus on training and develop their skills, how will they improve? if you don´t create your own taklent as a promotion you depend on others to provide you with good fighters, and they end up paying lots of money for fighters (Overeem, Lombard, Cung Lee) for fighters that  don´t get good rsults

* Edited at 05.20.2013, 3:09 PM ET *

^^ damn, aweful grammar, but a good point still... focus on the positive people

Mayweather just made $32 million for his last fight and Guerrero made $3 million, slightly more than mma fighters I would guess.

The fact that Mayweather made more than 20 times what the ENTIRE card made at UFC 159 shows that there are huge problems regarding payment in both MMA and boxing.

I personally think the best thing would be to put a more solid bottom line.  Obviously the UFC gives plenty of opportunity to make more money based on performance, but making a bottom line pay of 10,000/10,000 or 12,000/12,000 I think would be more than fair.  No, it's still not a crap load of money, but as a starting pay it's pretty good.  If the incentives are there to make more, the UFC should facilitate that effort.

skelliher put it in the best possible words.  The lower end fighters should be viewed as an investment but, these guys can't live up to their potential if they can't devote enough time to it because they need a second job.

One of the things that makes it difficult is say you are a newcomer and you make 12,000/12,000. Not a bad payday if you win. What if you lose and tear your acl? You just made 12,000 for the whole year.

The UFC should think about adding a monthly stipend for the bottom level of fighters. Put the upper limit at 8000 per fight. If your contract stipulates that you make 8000 or less in show money, then you qualify for like 1000 per month as long as you have a fight scheduled in the next 6 mos. Nothing too drastic, but enough to pay rent. 


I know the NBDL and minor league baseball give their players per diem (averaging from $30-$50, which would be around 900-1500/mo).

The NBA also has this program ($100 per day) and these guys make millions, why can't the UFC have this for at least the lower paid fighters?

The cream will always rise to the top, turds sink to the bottom. Let's not pretend people pay big money and fill the stadium for the under card bouts. Brazil is one of the exceptions. We've all watched numerous Facebook prelims and you can practically hear the ******* crickets.

Yeah Mayweather made blah blah ga-zillion dollars... there are probably undercard fighters on his last PPV that made less than UFC minimum.

My opinion differs from the thread consensus, but I just wanted to give my 2 cents. Because I am not an important figure in MMA media, that's all my opinion is worth. I get 2 cents, Ben Fowlkes gets paid more. You see how that **** works?

We're not talking about giving them a ton of money. Just enough to making fighting a viable option for some of these guys who are barely scraping by.

Theoretically, fighter quality would rise because you would have fighters who were working a second job the ability to quit that job and focus solely on fighting. Investing in the new wave of fighters would be incredible for the sport.

If you get a fighter who is making 6000 to show and win, he fights 2x a year and wins both thats 24,000. Add 1000 per month, you have a fighter who is making 36,000 from fighting and he can quit that full time job and uses those 40 hours per week to focus on getting better as a fighter.

Until fighters open their mind to fighting at places other than the UFC they will continue to get paid pennies on the dollar.  The UFC has a high supply of fighters with a low demand so there is no conceivable way that fighter pay can increase.  Economics 101 folks.

It's not necessarily the fighters that will influence fighter pay, but the rival promotions themselves.  Until there is a promotion that can legitimately compete with the UFC, the UFC will continue to dictate the pay scale.

Affliction is the only org that attempted to outbid UFC for fighters. They out bid for Sylvia, Arlovski, and won the bidding for Fedor offering co-promotion. Of course this made them go out of business within 2 shows. So fighters greatly overestimate their own value forgetting how important that UFC name is. Bellator with Viacoms backing could win bidding wars but they have to be willing to lose money at first and for a while.