Nate Diaz is in a pretty sweet spot these days.
The combat sports free agent has an increased standing offer from Professional Fighters League (PFL) to fight Jake Paul in the cage for $15 million. He’s also got a trilogy fight with Conor McGregor to cash in.
The man has options … the man has money.
It wasn’t always like this for the younger Diaz brother, though. Documents from UFC’s anti-trust lawsuit are being methodically un-redacted by Bloody Elbow to reveal the full honest-to-God pay figures for many fighters over the years, and those pay figures are low. They’re especially low for Diaz, who was still fighting on a $20,000/$20,000 contract for his 21st UFC fight!
Things finally started looking better for Diaz in 2013 when he beat Gray Maynard in the main event of The Ultimate Fighter TUF) 18 Finale. Check out these numbers:
$125,000 or $180,000 vs. Gray Maynard — Disclosed Purse: $80,000 (15K/15K+50K bonus)
$56,000 vs. Rafael dos Anjos — Disclosed Purse: $16,000
$2,838,158 vs. Conor McGregor 1
$4,315,490 vs. Conor McGregor 2 — Disclosed Purse: $2,050,000 (2M+50K bonus)
Now, it’s a real question whether UFC is willing to pay Diaz enough to return and fight Conor McGregor for a third time. With PFL’s $15 million offer sitting there and McGregor insisting the third fight must happen, Diaz has a lot of negotiating power. But, UFC is perfectly happy just saying “No” to paying anyone not named Conor (or Brock Lesnar) more than $5 million.
One last fun fact: McGregor’s “Red Panty Nights” were real, at least for fellow champions competing on the same card. Joanna Jedrzejczyk earned a stunning $2,296,484 to fight Karolina Kowalkiewicz at UFC 205 (headlined by McGregor vs. Alvarez). And Holly Holm banked $2,986,830 opposite Miesha Tate on the undercard of UFC 296: “McGregor vs. Diaz.”
It’s funny, there are guys here who actually DO only make 15k in an entire year. And they’re whining about how getting paid 15k for a fight is too low, but the fighter was actually making $180,000.
Poor people crying about rich people who work 1 day a year not being rich enough. So much to laugh at.
Yup, grown men advocating for other grown men to make more money is weird
Wanting fighters to get their fare share used to be viewed as normal, this forum has just gotten weird as shit over the years
Yeah wtf…why wouldnt you want fighters to get a bigger piece of the pie.
Fk off shill.
Have you heard of supply and demand? It’s a free market, people are willing to fight for peanuts and so they should.
You could try to make an argument for why they should. That would be a good starting point.
So far the only attempt has been a guy who wrote the words “fare share”
The story is telling itself at this point