I’m always for the fighters making more money. But Jones shot himself In the foot with his negotiating tactics. Should have had the new contract in place before dropping his LHW title and putting on the weight to move up. I read somewhere that he fired his management and has been doing it on his own recently, if that’s true this all makes a lot more sense.
Jones was at ground zero for multiple event cancellations and at least one fight card to be moved out of state the day before. How much did that cost the UFC/Dana personally? Did Dana White lose a million dollars out of pocket? He’s the most petty and vindictive businessman I know. I wonder if in his mind he has Jon Jones on a minimum wage contract, “I’ll never do that guy another favour again”, that kind of mentality. I’d say he’s the kind of guy to stop just short of cutting off his nose to spite his face… but I’m pretty sure he’s also doing this to GSP.
He was definitely to blame for the cancelled fight with DC but UFC 151 being cancelled was Dan Henderson’s fault.
I get that you’re saying it’s your opinion and not facts…but the PPV buys are the facts, right? Regardless of how many awards GSP won, whether or not he has a GSP/Obama statue, those are all things that speak to his apparent popularity, and help you guess at how well his PPVs will sell…but we don’t have to guess, we can look at the data and see what they actually sold.
Chael is full of shit about 90% of what he talks about, but if we want to talk about Chael, he also said that Jon had shitty representation and a shitty UFC deal. He said on a recent podcast (within the last 3-4 weeks) that after the Jones vs Chael fight they approached Chael saying “you should come work with us, we got Jon X for this fight” and Chael walked away saying “these guys don’t have a clue how this works because the deal they were bragging about as a great deal that should impress me was worse than what I was already making.”
You can only take Chael with a grain of salt, but he did say Jon had a shit deal.
As for him not being a draw, Jon’s average reported PPV is like 550K (you can quickly google “jon jones ppv buys” and a recent article listing his PPVs pops up) and he has multiple events over 700K…outside of Diaz and Masvidal doing numbers like that recently for a couple events, nobody other than Conor, GSP, Ronda and Brock have pulled better numbers than Jon…and Chael isn’t much of a draw. He headlined 3 PPVs against Silva twice, and Jon once and only the Silva rematch sold all that well. Jon did better PPV buys with Anthony Smith than he did with Chael.
Khabib had a couple big ones (Conor and Poirier) but Khabib’s other events drew less than 700K.
So yes, Jon is not a draw when compared to Conor or people like Ronda and Brock who don’t fight anymore. However, when you compare him with just about anyone else, his numbers are rock solid. His shit PPVs sell better than any PPV DC or Stipe headlined, unless we’re counting when DC headlined opposite Jones.
DC trying to be champ/champ sold less than 400K buys…so when you look at that, and compare Jon selling 600K buys with Anthony Smith, yes…Jon is a draw. How won’t sell 1M+ with a shit opponent, but only Conor does that.
So yes, if you compare
You’re trolling now, right? Liddell has one event ever that topped 700K buys, and it was Ortiz 2…and that’s the one event Ortiz ever sold more than 400K buys. The first Chuck vs Tito fight did a whopping 106K buys.
Exactly…I didn’t respond to that in the couple posts guys made about that above. Jon didn’t cause any events to get cancelled. He was pulled from a fight the week of (UFC 200) but was replaced by Anderson Silva…and that event was 5 years ago. The card that was cancelled because Jon wouldn’t accept a new opponent on 9 days notice was UFC 151, and that was 9 years ago.
So if people are saying that Jon’s current contract status is the result of him not fighting Chael on 9 days notice 9 years ago, combined with a drug test failure 5 years ago, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. As I said previously, the UFC doesn’t give a fuck about drug test failures. On this last PPV they were advertising a fightpass comeback special on TJ Dillashaw, and that dude just missed 2 years for EPO, quite literally the dirtiest shit you can take.
Again, I don’t fault the UFC for that either. It’s their job to make money by putting on programming people want to see. I’m simply pointing out that the arguments of the UFC punishing Jon financially for drug tests aren’t really valid.
And I do expect the Francis vs Jon fight to happen. There’s too much heat for it not to. If Dana really wanted Lewis vs Francis for Aug (like he discussed) that’s the fucking fight we’d get. He’s not going to be bullied by Francis on it. If he truly wanted to Lewis fight, he’d tell Francis it’s the only option, and if he turned it down, would be shitting all over Francis like he does with other guys who turn down fights.
So yeah, I do think Jon vs Francis is still being discussed for Aug.
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Just to be clear, I’ve never heard anyone else say that. It was wild speculation on my part. I agree that Jones could be making more, should be making more. But I think we differ on why that is… I think it’s primarily Jon’s fault, especially his out of ring nonsense undermining his hand.
But then I was going a step further and simply asking a question: is there an issue of Dana being petty about cancelled/moved events. Point the finger however you want, Jon was at ground zero, and Dana is a KNOWN petty man. Baaaaad mix.
PPV sales are facts but what about other forms of revenue? Merch sales, live gate ticket sales, and things like that. GSP has the 3rd highest gate in UFC history. I think we forget that sometimes. You make some valid points for sure. There are strong arguments on both sides
Can you refresh my mind? I’m sure I’m not the only one that doesn’t remember how it unfolded.
My recollection is that Jon forced the cancellation of 151… his scheduled opponent pulled out and the UFC offered Chael as a late replacement, and Jon said no because he didn’t have enough time to prepare for Chael?
And then there was the card where Jon failed a drug test, Nevada wouldn’t sanction it, so Dana moved it to California who was OK with the failed test and steroids being in Jones system immediately pre-fight?
I feel like there was a second card that was cancelled last minute, Jones wouldn’t take a fight that was offered?
oh 100%…Dana is petty and Jon is fucking up this negotiation. I don’t disagree on that at all. I’ve made other threads about how Jon needs to show the UFC he’s willing to compromise, because right now both sides are basically telling the other to eat shit, and you don’t ever win those type of arguments with Dana. Dana isn’t ever coming back to the table if Jon’s stance is “pay me or fuck you.”
Jon hired a great agent, and that’s why I think this gets done. The only other way it happens is if someone like Lewis gets hurt a couple weeks before the Francis fight and Dana offers Jon a ton of $ to take it on short notice (like he did with Diaz vs Conor and Masvidal vs Usman). If RDA never gets hurt leading into that Conor fight, Nate Diaz is still likely holding out refusing to fight, the same exact way Nick has been. The only reason Nate has the deal he does is because he agreed to fight on short notice for a ton of money, and then won the fight.
I’m one of the biggest guys to shit on Jon here, but I hope things work out for him. If he came clean about his drug issues, apologized for using steroids, renounced that path, fought at HW a few times, I’d have no problem calling the guy the GOAT. Believe it or not, the MMA community is exceptionally forgiving about roids when the person gives a heart felt, tearful apology that explains exactly what happened and why it happened (see Chael, Leben, …). On the contrary, people who keep pushing the bullshit (Cyborg) have their careers stained and ruined by it.
Edit: he’s still young! It’s not like there’s a shortage of time for him to turn shit around.
Edit #2: especially young for the HW division where average age is something like 40.
Jones renegotiated his most recent contract. The Kawas have gone on record saying they were not involved in that contract. He is one fight into an 8 fight deal that HE himself negotiated. HE can fight for what he negotiated WHEN HE WAS CHAMPION no less…or piss off. Jones doesnt deserve one more penny than that
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Also maybe DC got a bigger chunk than Bisping, so comparing those two fights the entire main event purse should matter somewhat.
How much did it cost the fighters who had to pay California taxes? Nevada has no state income tax.
This is where the argument falls flat. Who are Jon’s peers that bring similar value and what variables are there to determine who his peers with similar value are?
Let’s use Conor as an example.
Conor was in the right place at the right time with the right leverage. Much, if not most of that is a result of things Conor did to create those circumstance as well as moves he made to capitalize on them. Can Jon say the same?
Take also into account negative circumstances and the choices made as a result. Peers with similar value would be extremely difficult to determine.
I was curious about this and pulled up the PPV numbers for all of the ones headlined by Jones vs those headlined by GSP. There are a lot of factors at play: GSP was with the UFC when the organization was younger and in general less developed (so, in effect, I would argue his PPV buys are each more valuable relatively as they represent a bigger change to the status growth: more growth impact). In any case, GSP beat Jones by about 225,000 PPV on average across 9 and 13 events respectively. At $60 per PPV, assuming UFC pockets 50% and not even factoring in gate and other sales, GSP is worth an expected $6.75 million more to the UFC per event than Jon Jones. This doesn’t even factor in greater reliability (no worries about drug or steroid issues) which translates to higher return and lower risk. This is also born out in the numbers: the standard deviation of Jones PPV buys is about 43,000 higher than GSP. So net-net, GSP had a higher expected buys with more certainty on that number vs Jones (and the UFC doesn’t know the buys in advance, only after).
Net-net, if GSP was $10 million, $6-$7 might be appropriate for Jones (factoring in his PPV on the upswing).
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I don’t want to shit on Jones any more than I already have, but the PPV comparison is extremely difficult if everyone is playing fair, and rife with dishonesty from both sides, if we’re being realistic.
One of the major dishonest points from Jon’s side is this. The first supercard during the GSP era was UFC 100. Before then, it was incredibly uncommon to have 3 “main event” worthy fights on one PPV main card. That is, any of those three fights could be the headliner. It just never happened. And most of GSP’s PPV numbers are built on that reality.
Jones PPV numbers, on the other hand, are almost all post UFC100, and the majority of them have two main event worthy fights.
UFC 100 - Jake O’Brien (undercard… headlined by Lesnar and GSP)
TUF 10 Finale - Hamill (co-main… headlined by Big Country)
Live 1 & 2 - Vera and Vladdy (first non-PPV headliners)
126 - Bader (main card under Spider-Belfort and Rich-Forrest)
128 - main event vs Shogun
… 128 is a perfect example of a GSP-era PPV… Faber vs Wineland was the main-event-unworthy co-main.
135 - Rampage. Matt Hughes co-main. That’s a transition to a well-supported main card (not all there yet, but the START of that era)
140 - Machida. Mir, both Nogs, and Tito Ortiz on the main card (again, note the transition).
145 - Rashad. Arguably weaker main card with Rory MacDonald and Miguel Torres.
152 - Belfort. Co-main title fight, Mighty Mouse vs Benavidez. Bisping and Stann.
159 - Chael. This should probably not count in my argument since this was Chael’s peak drawing power. But even still, Bisping, Belcher, Big Country, Phil Davis and Jim Miller on the main card.
165 - Gus. Barao Wineland title fight co-main. Mitrione and Khabib.
172 - Glover. Rumble, Phil Davis co-main, Rockhold, Jim Miller, Max Holloway main card.
182 - DC. Jones probably deserves a lot of credit for this one… lacklustre main card. Cowboy and Hector Lombard main card. Keep in mind this was peak Jones and peak DC, two unbeaten champs facing off. It should have been the biggest fight of all time.
197 - OSP. Mighty Mouse and Cejudo title co-main. Barboza, Anthony Pettis, Whittaker, Yair main card.
214 - DC2. TWood Maia co-main (title?). Cyroid. Robbie Lawler, Cowboy. Oezdemir Manuwa. Bangin main card. Again this is peak Jones, but note that he was extremely well supported.
232 - Gus2. Nunes Cyroid title co-main.
235 - Anthony Smith. Usman TWood title co-main. Ben Askren, Robbie. Weili, Garbrandt.
239 - Thiago Santos. Nunes vs Holly title co-main. Masvidal Askren. Blachowicz Rockhold. Diego FUCKING Sanchez.
247 - Dom Reyes. Valentina title co-main. This is a bit weaker outside the main and co-main.
The point being, how many of Jones PPV buys are really due to Jon Jones. I mean, it’s always known that you’ve got to have a dancing partner no matter who you are. But was Bones the A Side, drawing wise, with Chael? Was he with Askren? DC? It was a big deal when the UFC started putting multiple title fights on the same PPV.
To Jon’s credit, he’s never appeared on one of the three title-fight main cards. So that tells you the UFC holds him in some regard. But not enough regard to truly headline a card on his own (hence the two title fights on MOST of his PPV’s).
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This is the kind of stuff that I wish we could hear about. You know they have a team going over the numbers and putting a valuation on each fighter. It would be interesting to see their criteria and how they break things down. Maybe one day someone will go rogue and release the secrets to let us see behind the curtain.
Encouraging his billionaire friends to invest millions into the UFC isn’t exactly a sacrifice.