Bruce Dias 
As compensation across many professional sports becomes more lucrative, the focus on how much UFC fighters get paid continues to intensify.
This is not just about the lucrative wave of pro sports in general, either. UFC is more mainstream than ever. Its pay-per-view events are appointment-viewing. The biggest names in the sport are borderline celebrities. Reddit message boards are beyond popular. The popularity of UFC betting online overshadows those of many other sports. The list goes on.
Yet, it is widely assumed that UFC fighters receive an incredibly small share of the company’s revenue compared to agreements in other sports. This is also why many believe that UFC salaries are not publicized: Commissioner Dana White doesn’t want them to be exposed as ridiculously low.
However, in a recent conversation with Vegas PBS, White posed a different explanation for the opaque nature of UFC pay.
“There’s no gag order on any of these fighters,” he said. “They could all sit down and do full interviews on how much they make and what they were paid. They don’t want to because they don’t want you to know what they got paid. When people find out what you made, it makes life a lot tougher. There are a lot of people sitting around looking for handouts when they find out you made millions of dollars.“
This is, as the kids say or used to say, a true LMAO moment.
Compensation across virtually every other sport is common knowledge. Fans can recite the salary of their favorite NFL or NBA player without a second’s worth of hesitance. The prize purses for pro tennis and golf tournaments are publicly available, and they are discussed often.
There is no way that UFC fighters have collectively come together and agreed not to talk about compensation because they don’t want people in their orbit hitting them up for money. The reason for the relative silence is, in all likelihood, White himself.
Dana White’s Power Could Be Preventing UFC Fighters From Speaking Out
As White mentions, there is no official “gag order” on compensation discussions. But, when you really think about it, there may as well be.
Consider for a minute what would happen to a UFC fighter if they started openly commenting on how much they made—or rather, how much they didn’t make. Perhaps their career doesn’t suffer. Or maybe White and The Company mess with the future matchups, putting them in unwinnable positions or no marquee spots at all.
We have no doubt that White would flat-out deny the possibility. And to his credit, we can’t necessarily be sure what would happen. But UFC fighters are not unionized; they are considered independent contractors. Speaking out against their “boss” and The Company leaves them vulnerable to setbacks others do not necessarily have to worry about.
Look at what is happening in the WNBA now. The players have a union and are pushing for better compensation relative to how much money the league operates on. Negotiations have gotten contentious, and Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has been called out. Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx, in particular, went absolutely in on the commish.
Now, these tense debates have yet to result in a deal the players union deem favorable. There may even be a lockout next season. But Collier and others have not hesitated to speak publicly because they have an entire union behind them. They do not have to worry about getting blackballed for the rest of their careers—not as much as UFC fighters do anyway.
It’s Safe To Assume UFC Fighters Are Underpaid
We could give the UFC and Dana White the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there isn’t as big of a compensation issue or gap as many think.
Still, that’s tough to believe. As Ryan Morik writes for FOX Sports:
“In 2014, former UFC fighters filed a suit in Las Vegas federal court, seeking class-action status, accusing the company of using ‘an anticompetitive scheme of long-term exclusive fighter contracts, coercion, and acquisitions of rival MMA promoters to establish and maintain dominance in the MMA industry and suppress fighter compensation,’ according to a Forbes report on developments in the suit. That suit resulted in a $375 million settlement last year.”
Where there’s smoke, there is usually fire. And there’s a ton of smoke here.
White throwing around the “millions of dollars” phrasing is fairly comical. If a recent compilation of the highest paid UFC fighters of all time is accurate, just 20 names have ever eclipsed $5 million in earnings. The vast majority of UFC participants are not making the kind of money that White references.
Yes, you can make the meritocracy argument. The best fighters are always going to make the most money. But the UFC just signed an $8 billion deal with Paramount. That revenue does not exist without the entire pool of fighters driving the product Paramount wants to pay for.
This same logic is why minimum players in the NBA (almost) all make over $1 million per year. Those salaries are collectively bargained, because they have a union, and based on revenue the league is generating.
We may not be fully privy to how much UFC fighters are paid, but everything we do know points to their compensation failing to align with their value to The Company. White’s idea that they guard their earnings out of fear people will want to borrow money from them is hilariously, hopelessly flimsy.
