Mayweather and Paul's actual purse - not what people keep quoting

The whining about pay has turned me off the sport more than anything else. Francis should go back to living on the streets if he’s so unhappy.

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I’m not completely sure how to take Francis’ tweet, frankly. He didn’t ask for more $, he didn’t say he was underpaid…giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, he was highlighting the fake and crazy numbers circulating the internet (100M for Floyd and 20M for Paul) saying “it’s crazy that Logan Paul just made $20M on a boxing exhibition, what are we doing wrong?”

I’m sure we’d not an idiot and can do basic math. If his PPV with Stipe did 400K buys at $70 per buy, that generates $28M in PPV revenue. It’s pretty obvious that $20M purses aren’t possible. Where he hasn’t had public spats over pay, or threatened to not fight (like the Diaz brothers, Costa, Masvidal, Conor, Poirier etc) it’s possible his line about “what are we doing wrong?” was more about “why are people paying to watch this shit instead of what we’re doing?”

I think that’s a more valuable question to ask. Why aren’t more people captivated by a guy like Francis? New champ, and has KO’d 5 guys in a row.

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If Francis wants to make more money then he should play the bad guy role and piss people off like Mayweather and Jake Logam do. People like a spectacle with shit talking and beef, whether it’s real or not. When there are two teams in any sport that have a serious rivalry what do people say? “These two dont like each other. This is going to be a good game.” Its a very simple thing to understand. The problem is these guys dont want to play the heel role like Colby does. “No, I dont do all that clown pro wrestling stuff. I’m a fighter and I fight, not talk.” You want that McGregor/Mayweather money but you dont want to put in the work on crafting a public image and playing the game. Everybody wants to be the humble respectful samurai like GSP. That only works for a few guys who fit that role perfectly like Wonderboy. For everyone else they just come across as boring and uninteresting. You want bigger money and more attention? Then fucking do something to get it. They have a degree of fame as well as the ufc billion dollar marketing machine behind them. “Ohh they dont promote me” Promote yourself and when they see you have something then they’ll jump in and push you. Look at Suga Shawn. You need a gimmick. It’s not the 90s anymore. There are fight events literally every weekend. Sooooo many fights going on. Why should anyone care about watching yours unless you give them something to care about? I dont know why these guys dont understand this.:man_shrugging:

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There’s really two ways to go about it…the way you mention, the shit talking, creating an interesting character, or winning a ton. GSP wasn’t popular initially, neither was Anderson. They became more and more popular as they looked more and more unbeatable. Jon Jones was popular early in his career (several PPVs with more than 700K buys, and that was quite a bit back then) and it was because he was dominating. It was long before the shit talk, long before he started getting arrested and shit.

So if you want people to pay to watch you fight, you need to be either interesting, or vastly superior to your competition…and it does have to be a big gap. Look at Stipe, he lost some fights before winning the belt, so even after he won and defended it, he never looked unbeatable and nobody gave a fuck about his fights. DC lost to Jones twice, so even with a belt on him, he didn’t look unbeatable. So when they had their first fight, champion vs champion it sold less than 400K buys. So it’s not enough to be a champion, or even a champion with a few defenses. If you want to be super popular without having an interesting character, you have to look unbeatable.

And what makes someone REALLY popular is when they do both, like Conor. All that shit talk, then wins the belt with the first real strike he throws on Aldo. Boom, insanely popular. Same for Masvidal…all the shit talk, loved by the hardcores, relatively unknown to everyone else, brutal KO of Askren, viral moment, people start saying shit like “super necessary” and he’s now a star. To be a huge star, you really need a personality and a viral moment in a big fight.

Unless of course you’re already a celebrity when you decide to fight…and it’s not really fair for UFC guys like Paulo Costa who have 112K twitter followers to compare himself to someone like Logan Paul who has 6M+. We’re talking about a very popular celebrity and a fighter who isn’t popular at all.

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A Francis heel turn would be epic!

Aren’t they saying more like a million buys now?

I’m not sure what you’re asking. Who is “they” and a million buys for who?

Francis has headlined 2 PPVs and neither appeared to sell well. UFC 220 sold 350K, and no numbers were reported for his rematch with Stipe, but we didn’t even get any talk from Dana about how well it sold, how people are really captivated by Francis etc.

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Francis Money Ngannou. Put him in tight designer clothes and suits that are a size too small and obvious knockoffs while he brags about the prices in african money like francs and rands. Have him use all of Floyd and Conor’s lines but mess them up with broken english.

“When you fight me, you call wife and say is green dashiki night”

“Who de fuck ees that gentleman?”

They is whoever the fuck reports the buys. There’s a thread or news article on here putting it at about a million buys.

1M worldwide, yes. My post said 600-650K in the US with worldwide numbers not yet reported, which was true at the time of the post. Either way, I did the math based on a million buys.

Not angry at ALL…

You have 2 GOATs fighting with a lifetime of followers. Yes, Logan is a GOAT in terms of YouTube. He has MILLIONS of fans. When you have 20million subscribers, if 1 out of 10 buys your PPV that’s 2million buys (I get it, it’s a reach but hear me out)

Then mayweather who has a ton of fans from a LIFETIME of being upper echelon in boxing.

Plus they both have a ton of haters.

This is why they get paid. Has nothing to do with skill.

Alto makes awesome knives. Gerber knives suck. But guess what? Gerber’s following is 1000x bigger than Alto’s.

I dont see why other fighters are bitching. Learn from it.

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100%, good post.

Khabib has few countries and religion behind him, and a O in record

I feel like sponsorship money should be added to the calculation. You can almost guarantee Logan took his sponsors to the cleaners and there were quite a few.

Good post and I wonder the same thing. For awhile folks complained about Stipe being the hvwt champion and that although he was highly skilled, he just wasn’t marketable at all. I remember I’d bring up Stipe in conversations and people had no clue who he was. Then came Ngannou who is a huge power puncher that is flatlining opponents. Well, even fewer people know who Ngannou is! He has a great highlight reel but is he a draw? Doesn’t seem so so what is he lacking? I admit his interviews are boring as hell but you’d think his highlight reel would make up for it a bit? It doesn’t seem to be though

I’ve said elsewhere that to me it just seems like ufc/mma isn’t the new exciting sport it used to be. It’s not dying or anything but gone are the days when casuals knew who numerous fighters were

Agree, if Ngannou was to be much more unruly and chaotic then more people would tune in. Problem is- Ngannou is a pretty laid back guy so he’s going to have to ‘pretend’… people loved Tank Abbott way back because his tough guy persona was pretty much exactly who he was …he defied authority and it was interesting. Mike Tyson had that same aura about him. You never knew what you were going to get with Tyson. He brought the X factor and a level of menace that made him fascinating to watch. Even have pre and post fight interviews were great because he was somewhat insane lol … now you could take Ngannou and try to craft him into this type of character but it probably won’t work as we know it’s an act

So basically the stars have to align for a fighter to get that surge in popularity. Masvidal struck gold in getting matched with Askren and knocking him dead in 10 seconds … on any other night he could have gotten wrestle fucked for 3 Rds… a wrong matchup can derail stardom

I wonder if Ngannou loss to Stipe hurt his momentum at all? It definitely didn’t help as it took that aura of invincibility away from him.

wonder if a big name couple of fighters -free agents- decides to hype and throw their own internet ppv, how much would they make
for this example lets say its just a single fight under ufc rules held insome wacky place that needs no athletic comission

You have a point. Playing the heal is just one way to do it. Someone needs to explain to Francis that what hes doing wrong is that he’s not putting in the work to create a persona and build his brand. You want McGregor, Maywesther and Payl Bros money? Then build yourself up so you can bring I the amount of buys they do. They all figured this out, came up with personas that were suited to them and put in the work to be noticed and followed. Francis enjoys being a hero to his people in Africa but they arent buying ppvs. I wonder why these guys dont get a pr agent and team of people to come up with a marketing plan. If you just wnat to train, do required media and fight then you shouldnt be wondering why you arent making big money and asking what you’re doing. Hell, at least call Chael and ask for advice on how to play the promotion game. Do something instead of just whining on twitter.

It isnt very easy to do. Theres been a lot of shows that have failed and lost money. Even professionals with success in other ventures have failed. Look at De La Hoya’s mma venture.