Pride pay scale?

We seen what the UFC is paying, (pretty good btw) but dos anyone have a pride pay scale?

This was posted By Ivan Trembow, MMAWeekly.com
Posted: April 7, 2004:
Salaries in Japan

For much of the same reasons that bigger MMA promotions in the United States can afford to pay fighters more than smaller MMA promotions, fighters generally make a lot more money fighting in Japan than they ever possibly could in the United States. The reason is simple: MMA and its sister sport of kickboxing are like mainstream sports in Japan. So, there are several Japanese organizations capable of paying fighters big money, whether you're on the bottom of the pay scale or the top.

While specific information on each fighter's pay is not available for any Japanese organization, MMAWeekly has uncovered the Japanese and American salaries of a handful of American mixed martial artists. We are presenting this information for the purposes of comparison, to illustrate the point that there are two different pay scales for MMA depending on whether you're talking about American MMA or Japanese MMA. Some of these numbers are educated guesses from Japan with what some fighters reported to us.

Alex Steibling in America--- $1,000 to fight and $1,000 more to win in the WEC

Alex Steibling in Japan--- $15,000 to fight and $15,000 more to win in Pride

Dan Henderson in America--- $20,000 to fight and $20,000 more to win in the UFC; this was at UFC 17 when the UFC was owned by SEG; this salary is probably still the most Henderson could expect to make in the UFC today as a middleweight

Dan Henderson in Japan--- $65,000 to fight Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira at Pride 24 in December 2002

Din Thomas in America--- $12,000 to fight and $12,000 more to win in the UFC (this was the high point of his UFC contract)

Din Thomas in Japan--- $25,000 to fight on the Antonio Inoki New Year's Eve show; win bonus would have been an additional $15,000

Jens Pulver in America--- $11,000 to fight and $11,000 more to win in the UFC (this was the high point of his UFC contract, even when he was the UFC Lightweight Champion)

Jens Pulver in Japan--- $50,000 to fight in Shooto

Jeremy Horn in America--- $6,000 to fight and $6,000 more to win in the UFC

Jeremy Horn in Japan--- $50,000 to fight (was paid this salary by two different organizations in Japan)

Matt Lindland in America--- $18,000 to fight and $18,000 more to win in the UFC (this is excellent pay for any mixed martial artist in the United States)

Matt Lindland in Japan--- Pride executives offered him $50,000 to fight Kazushi Sakuraba last December before abruptly changing their plans

Rich Clementi in America--- $2,000 to fight and $2,000 more to win in the UFC (this is what almost all UFC rookies make mmaweekly)

Rich Clementi in Japan--- $15,000 to fight in the ZST lightweight tournament; win bonus for winning the tournament would have been an additional $50,000 mmaweekly

Rich Franklin in America--- $5,000 to fight and $5,000 more to win in the UFC

Rich Franklin in Japan--- $25,000 to fight on the Antonio Inoki New Year's Eve show

How much are the "stars" making: Mino, Silva, Sak, Rampage.

Based on the numbers above, guys like Mino and Silva must pull in $250,000, maybe even $500K. Mino throws down against all competitors: Sapp, Herring, Henderon, Cro Cop, Fedor, etc. Could that bastard be pulling in $750K

TTT

I think those are somewhat deceiving numbers.

In some cases the numbers are almost the same except they are split up in show and win money. In other cases they are old salaries and fighters took the better offer in Japan after they had made a name, the offer from the UFC was not mentioned but Japan was offering enough more though that they took that offer. In several cases it was a one time thing as well, not a steady paycheck.

The problem is that we can get numbers for every fighter at the UFC but we don't know Pride's lowball numbers. We don't know what they paid Q Jackson at first. We don't know what Bushido fighters make, what Matsui takes a beating for or what it takes for Pride to take a fighter away from Pancrase. And we know that the best fighters in both top organizations do get paid very similar amounts. Sometimes top UFC fighters are indeed getting more than their Pride counterparts. Other times somewhat less. But Pride makes a lot more revenue I assume, it really doesn't seem like the pay of the fighters is proportionate. Some people on this forum really make a lot of assumptions that are incorrect.

I'm just glad fighters have some competition among big shows or else paydays would suck. Hopefully we never lose Pride or UFC. That would be a big blow to the athletes.

I think QJ got somewhere around 12-15k for his first fight in Pride(vs Saku)

Didnt they say that the GP winners get 250k?

For how many fights?

I think Yoshida and Rickson are both in the 1 million dollars a fight club