UFC 300: How much money do fighters get for each fight?

Top of the bill on the UFC 300 fight card is the heavyweight title bout between defending champion Alex Pereira and Jamahal Hill at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. In one of the best lineups the event has ever seen, 12 champions or former title holders will be making their way into the cage.

In Thursday’s press conference, UFC President and CEO Dana White agreed to raise the separate cash bonuses on offer from $50,000 to $300,000, telling the crowd, “What should it be raised to? $300,000? It’s done!”. For this event only, White has promised to hand out four performance bonuses worth $300,000 each - two for the Performance of the Night and another two to the fighters who take part in the Fight of the Night.

UFC coming to Manchester

MMA, or Mixed martial arts, is the fastest-growing sport today and White also confirmed yesterday that talks are in the pipeline to take the event to Manchester and Spain with future events already confirmed for Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. The big question was raised in Thursday’s press conference - just how much are fighters making and should they be earning more?

Fighter pay has been a heavily debated topic for several years in the UFC. And while there is an average of how much UFC fighters get paid per fight, there are three salary tiers a UFC fighter can fall into. Let’s take you deeper into how it all works.

How much do UFC fighters get paid?

UFC fighters make money primarily through fights and the paychecks they receive from each. The fighters usually sign a contract for a certain amount of fights for a fixed amount of money each time they step inside the Octagon.

The three tiers are low, medium, and high, with the lowest earning between $10,000 and $30,000 and the highest tier for champions and superstars ranking between $500,000 and $3,000,000 per fight.

Rookie fighters usually get the Lowest Tier contract when they sign with the UFC. After a few wins and a blossoming reputation inside the Octagon, they might be able to negotiate improved conditions and a contract in the middle tier, ranging from $80,000 to $250,000 per fight.

The fighter’s popularity and recent results affect the payouts each receives, ranging from tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand dollars.

UFC champions and fighters with the biggest fan bases receive the best type of contract, the highest tier: ranging from $500,000 to $5,000,000 per fight. The more viewers they pull in for the UFC and the more fans they have, UFC fighters can earn as much as half a million dollars to five million per fight, if not more.

While sometimes mistaken, both fight participants take home cash. Depending on the size of their fan base and the tier they fall into, they’ll take home their base earnings. Additionally, whoever wins earns an additional prize, sometimes double their base pay, though that typically only applies to the first two tiers.

Conor McGregor: top earner in UFC

To further encapsulate how UFC earnings work, let’s use Conor McGregor, the highest-paid UFC fighter with reported earnings of nearly $600 million. Despite losing to Dustin Poirier, McGregor brought home $22 million in January 2021. Before then, his last fight was a year before, in which he earned $30 million for knocking out Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone. That’s $52 million in two fights. He is estimated to have earned a career total of $39,300,000 just from fights - not including earnings from Pay-Per-View income or other endorsements.

Are UFC fighters underpaid?

McGregor, however, does not represent all UFC fighters. The 35-year-old Irish fighter made a name for himself in the UFC, but thanks to many endorsements and his Proper 12 Irish Whiskey brand, he became one of the highest-paid UFC fighters.

And unlike other major American sports leagues, such as the NBA and NFL, that see their athletes take a 50 percent share of total revenue, the UFC pays its fighters a measly 16-20 percent.

One of the clearest examples concerns Frank Mir whose rematch against Brock Lesnar at UFC 100 in July 2009 was one of the top three UFC events in terms of Pay-Per-View audience figures. A total of 1.6 million viewers bought PPV packages at $44.95 a pop, bringing in a whopping $71 million in revenue and yet Mir pocketed just $45,000 for his efforts while Lesnar took home $400,000.

Mir would later tell MMA Fighting, “Brock himself, a much bigger superstar than Fury or Wilder. How come he wasn’t making $20 million? That blows my mind, and I don’t understand it. Until Conor McGregor came along, we had the record for the most pay-per-view buys sold. But at the time, I didn’t know better. A pay-per-view buy is a pay-per-view buy. Why is this sport paying their athletes this percentage of what they’re making versus this one?”

Some, like Flyweight Champion Demetrious Johnson, were forced to quit the sport because of poor pay, as he explained, “I finally got a new contract as champion, and I think it was $125,000 to fight and $50,000 to win, but I couldn’t get pay-per-view points - and that’s where a champion makes most of their bang for their buck, is the pay-per-view points. Because if you get on a card with a Conor McGregor and he does 2.1 million buys, then you just do the f*cking math.. You’re going to make a sh*tload of money. I never got the opportunity to do that.”