Total earnings for a fighter on a 10k/10k contract who wins: $5500
Total earnings for a fighter on a 10k/10k contract who loses: $1500
That’s all they’re left with to cover all of their actual living expenses beyond training.
For example, if a fighter is travelling to Ireland, Australia, or any other far away lands for a fight, they’ll want to get there earlier to adjust to the time zone shift and to deal with jet lag. Not to mention adjusting to the altitude (paging Cain). Every extra night means hundreds of dollars in hotel rooms and other assorted expenses.
Also, foreign governments will also tax the fighter’s earnings sometimes, making it EVEN HARDER to break even.
So if the fighter wins, and doesn’t have any extra coaching, they’re looking at a payday of roughly $5500 for months of full-time, hard work. For an active fighter, who fights 4 times a year and wins each fight, that’s about $22000 in their pocket at the end of the year for rent or mortgage, meals, gasoline, car payments, insurance, cellphone, etc… It’s barely minimum wage, and we’re not talking about burger flippers or cashiers here, we’re talking about professional athletes at the pinnacle of their sport.
Do you know how many guys that enter the UFC will actually make it anywhere near the top level? Not very many.
If you’re a pro-fighter, it better not be about the money for you either.
If that fighter loses, he’s looking at about $1500 after it’s all said and done to live off of for months. Not even nearly enough to scrape by for a couple months, assuming he’s able to book another fight immediately, which isn’t easy to do if you’re losing. If this fighter were to lose 4 times in a year before getting cut (Also very unlikely), they would be looking at $6000/yr for full-time work and getting beaten up infront of millions of people on national television. Granted, if a fighter can’t hang in the UFC, they shouldn’t be there – but it’s tough to improve when you can’t afford to dedicate yourself to training.
And we’re not even coming close to the actual costs for bringing in a couple of coaches to work through an entire training camp, not to mention hiring sparring partners and all of the other expenses.
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