UFC's Matt Schnell: 'I don’t want a fighters union, I’ll sit down at the table and negotiate for myself'

They are negotiating after the CBA’s deal ended. That’s nothing out of the ordinary. Again do you constantly hear MLB players complaining about their pay? I just see a union of players trying to negotiate a better deal for themselves. Like anyone else would at their job.

Ever since MMA went main stream you’ve heard nothing but complaints.

It makes zero difference in any of our lives if Ngannou makes 1 or 10 million. Matter of fact if they pay them more maybe we will see less filler. Goddamnit I am gonna argue with myself, brb

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See, there’s another gay term. MMA is barely “mainstream” and it simply isn’t baseball or basketball or any of these other traditional sports organization, so the comparison is moot.

These UFC fighters get paid what they get paid. They get the best minimum and maximum wages in the world to fight.

If they want higher pay, they should be jumping ship, they should be making names for themselves in other organizations and earn themselves better deals once they get to the UFC.

They aren’t gonna pay these fighters more money just because they’re nice. It’s a business transaction: You fight and make the UFC money and they pay you. If you want more, you have to earn them more.

Generally speaking, if you are willing to fight in the UFC, it’s because fighting in the UFC will pay you more than anywhere else, otherwise you would have gone to that anywhere else already instead.

But Ngnannou is a special case. He wants to go box and I fully respect that, but he’s doing it the right way by fighting out his contract and leaving as a free agent to do that apart from the UFC.

MMA is absolutely main stream. They have deals with ESPN and other networks.

They bring in millions and millions of dollars a year. If you think Korean Zombie only making 30K for a base pay in a title fight is fair then you are crazy.

Dana is a multi millionaire because of the fighters. The UFC is worth billions because of the fighters.

We pay a lot of money to watch these fights because we are fans. Majority of the money we spend should be going to the fighters because that’s what we are paying to see.

But you got greedy businessman that run the operations that rape these fighters financially behind closed doors. It’ll eventually change, because you have someone like Jake Paul who has millions of followers exposing them. Eventually the pressure will get to big and the UFC will have to stop being cheap because who’s going to come and fight for them for peanuts? How will they continue to run a business if no one wants to fight for them? You might get some hungry young fighter from Venezuela or Brazil that’ll start cheap but eventually will expect his worth.

Consumers aren’t going to dish out $60+ dollars a PPV for some 2-0 vs 3-0 no name guys.

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depends to some extent how one defines ‘mainstream’

For an example

Jon Jones: $450,000 ($400,000 to show, $50,000 Fight of the Night bonus)

Alexander Gustafsson: $80,000 ($30,000 to show, $50,000 Fight of the Night bonus)

Renan Barao: $72,000 ($11,000 to show, $11,000 win bonus, $50,000 Knockout of the Night bonus)

Mitch Gagnon: $62,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus, $50,000 Submission of the Night bonus)

Francis Carmont: $38,000 ($19,000 to show, $19,000 win bonus)

Brendan Schaub: $36,000 ($18,000 to show, $18,000 win bonus)

Khabib Nurmagomedov: $28,000 ($14,000 to show, $14,000 win bonus)

Pat Healy: $27,000

John Makdessi: $24,000 ($12,000 to show, $12,000 win bonus)

Alex Caceres: $20,000 ($10,000 to show, $10,000 win bonus)

Costa Philippou: $18,000

Ivan Menjivar: $17,000

Myles Jury: $16,000 ($8,000 to show, $18,000 win bonus)

Stephen Thompson: $16,000 ($8,000 to show, $8,000 win bonus)

Eddie Wineland: $15,000

Wilson Reis: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)

Matt Mitrione: $12,000

Michel Prazeres: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)

Nandor Guelmino: $12,000

Daniel Omielanczuk: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)

Mike Ricci: $8,000

Dustin Kimura: $8,000

Roland Delorme: $8,000

Chris Clements: $6,000

Renee Forte: $6,000

Jesse Ronsen: $6,000

Lol look at this for an example. Gus got a base pay of $30K to fight Jon Jones in 2013. His only fight that year.

The buy rate was 310K. Let’s just say Gus made a total of 200K for that PPV. Which is probably more than he did. 200K in one year, after taxes, fight camp, medical expenses… I’m guessing he made $90-$100K. Plus he has no health coverage, so he’s paying out of pocket for his health bills.

The fighters are replaceable and interchangeable. The UFC is THE STAR not the fighters. The sooner you guys realize that the better you can accept it for what it is. This is a blood sport that churns out fighters from all over the globe on a consistent level. The UFC capitalized on the fact that the “fights” are the product and not the “fighters” hence why they keep a bloated roster of fighter’s who we all know arent all elite.

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The UFC stole the WWEs playbook from the promotion , to the evil Mcmahon character to the contractoe status to the IPO to the salaries and health insurance.

WWE actually had stars that create content that people watch and yet those guys arent getting paid multi millions of dollars across the board.

The ufc is sports entertainment just like the wwe except there is an athletic commission and the fights arent fixed.

  1. Brock Lesnar - $12million
  2. John Cena - $8.5million
  3. Roman Reigns - $5million
  4. Randy Orton - $4.5million
  5. AJ Styles - $3.5million
  6. Seth Rollins - $3million
  7. The Miz - $2.5million
  8. The Undertaker - $2.5million
  9. Dean Ambrose - $2million
  10. Kevin Owens - $2million

Here is a list of Top 10 Female WWE superstars salary

  1. Ronda Rousey - $1.5million
  2. Charlotte Flair - $550,000
  3. Nikki Bella - $350,000
  4. Alexa Bliss - $350,000
  5. Mickie James - $300,000
  6. Brie Bella - $300,000
  7. Natalya - $300,000
  8. Asuka - $250,000
  9. Becky Lynch - $250,000
  10. Dana Brooke - $200,000

I would argue that they are more underpaid than UFC stars. They have to pay for their own meals and travel. Before covid they were on the road performing like 70% of the year.

Roman reigns is the face of the company making $5MM over a year of performances. I know UFC champs that got paid almost 60% of that in 1 night.

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Chookagian grossed more in the last 2 fights she had than Becky Lynch who is a way bigger star and headlines PPV.

This is why a union will never work. An association would be best for the fighters but wont work either because of this mindset.

Half of the income came off of win bonuses. If she didn’t win then what? She would of had made $145K.

Becky’s $250,000 is guaranteed.

Yeah and becky worked more dates than her. You can create a rate based dates worked and Chookagian would come out on top.

Vinnie is definitely a prick too. That’s why a lot of his stars are jumping ship to AEW.

Both companies are low balling their talent.

They are content providers. It isnt about the talent anymore it is about content. The brand is the star and will continue to be. The ufc has promoted fucking slop fights on their cards just to have a fight and content.

Fighters had more leverage 15 years ago when the UFC had 6 shows a year if that. Now there are so many fighters that want in just like WWE that the product isnt even quality of fighting or wrestling its just content to fill someones streaming library.

Hence why UFC opened the flood gates to wmma and sub 155lb divisions. They have so many cards to fill and just need warm bodies.

Or why the WWE signed every indy darling because they had 6 hours of live TV a week and more content on the WWE network.

MMA is barely mainstream. It gets nowhere near the fanfare of Major League Baseball, the NBA or football. To try to compare fighting to any of those three organizations is retarded. The UFC is worth four MLB baseball teams at most while having 7 times as many fighters on their roster, so you can’t compare the two honestly and also make any sort of sense. You have to use strawmen and beaten to death phrases like “fight for peanuts” to even make your point.

If these fighters want more, they should fight elsewhere. But they don’t fight elsewhere because they can’t make more money elsewhere. The UFC is the best offer 95% of fighters are gonna get and if that 5% can get paid more fighting somewhere else, then they should.

Fighting for Bellator or ONE or the PFL is way cooler than making less and fighting inside the UFC.

Dana is a multimillionaire because he did something and helped create an industry that no one else had. If you did that, you’d be a millionaire too.

The fighters would have nothing without the UFC and mma would still be stuck in the dark ages if he and the Fertittas never came around. So as much as people hate Dana White for being a prick, they should also thank him and be grateful for giving them an opportunity at a career.

The majority of the money comes from advertising and broadcasting deals, not from the fans. If you look up the actual revenue precentages, PPV money is actually a smaller fraction of the whole than you would think. The real money for any sport is in broadcasting rights if you just look.

Look, if they don’t like it, then they should fight somewhere else. Fighting in the UFC and earning $1M isn’t a right. Fighting the UFC for better pay without any sort of leverage isn’t gonna help any fighter and 98% of them are earning more in the UFC than they would anywhere else. Why would you want them to risk that just so you can sleep better at night knowing fighters are getting paid more?

That’s a hard doubt. If it helps fighters demand higher pay and they get it, then great. But Jake Paul can’t force anyone to pay the fighters more and he isn’t gonna get the UFC to bow to a bunch of gay irrelevant cucks on twitter who don’t matter.

Again, that’s a hard doubt. How exactly is that gonna happen? He’s paid a couple mma fighters to box him and take L’s. Big deal. Congrats on their success, but he isn’t gonna be able to do that with the other 99.99% of fighters who want more pay. He’s got a handful of those types of fights left at best.

Where are you drawing these conclusions from? The UFC is still the premier organization and still manages to pay the highest wages in mma. There are some fighters who would earn more by taking a shot at the $1M in PFL, but many others would be better off still if they were fighting in the UFC.

Regardless, if fighting elsewhere will earn a fighter more now than he was making before with the UFC, then he should do it every time. The PFL offers $25k guaranteed during the playoffs. That’s your win and show money for minimum contract UFC guys. But the upside for a lot of high level fighters only comes if you win that $1M. A lot of guys like Kevin Holland are probably mathematically still better off fighting in the UFC for $100k+ to show like he earns.

Fighters expect what the UFC is willing to pay. Anyone’s ‘worth’ is relative and their true worth is the most anyone is willing to pay, and to reiterate for the seventh time, the vast majority of the time that ‘anyone’ is the UFC.

So our talent are all independent contractors, so we actually don’t provide medical insurance for our talent,” McMahon stated. “We pay for all injuries, any surgeries or anything related to all in-ring injuries. We do have substance and abuses protocols that we offer our talent both current and retired. So anyone that’s ever had issues with drug and alcohol abuse, they can be a part of this program. WWE itself, for our employees, we do have health, medical and overall wellness and mental health.”

They still provide more then the UFC. With all the flying etc Becky does I’m sure she gets great deals on flights and saves money. She probably rents a home if she hasn’t already bought a house and paid it off.

She has a more stable job.