Michael Page critiques UFC fighter pay after big-money Zuffa Boxing signing
· Yahoo Sports
Michael Page was disappointed in the amount of money Zuffa Boxing shelled out for Conor Benn. | Getty/UFC
When the UFC broadcast deal with Paramount was announced, Michael Page took a wait-and-see approach rather than immediately celebrating the news.
Page’s skepticism turned out to be well founded when Zuffa Boxing, which is owned the same parent company as the UFC, made headlines in the combat sports world by signing Conor Benn to a one-fight deal worth a reported $15 million. While salary figures are rarely released these days, there are few, if any, athletes under the UFC banner who make that much for a single fight. Even with the new seven-year, $7.7 billion broadcast rights deal in place, thus far it doesn’t appear that UFC purses have increased significantly.
"It’s not something that I'm happy about," Page told Yahoo! Sports of the Benn signing. "What I would say is when the announcement of the Paramount, big-money partnership [with the UFC] came, people were asking me, 'Are you excited about this?' And my answer was, 'Well, what does that mean for the fighters? Until we understand how that's going to translate to the fighters, there's nothing to really be excited about.’"
Once the Paramount deal began, the UFC increased its post-fight bonuses to $100,000 for “Performance of the Night” and “Fight of the Night.” Additionally, fighters who secured finishes on a card but didn’t receive one of those bonuses would earn an additional $25,000 for their efforts.
“Then I heard about the, if you want to call it an increase, in bonus structure,” he added. “This is why I wasn’t bothered to be excited initially. Because for me, that doesn’t do enough comparatively to the amount of money that they’ve just brought in for themselves. ... Then to see it and how quickly [Dana White] values people — or how highly he values people away from the sport that kind of built his reputation — it's just upsetting, to be fair. It's disappointing more than anything.”
We Deserve More
The 29-year-old Benn, Page says, is “nowhere near the best in his field,” which is why the $15 million salary is so disappointing for the 38-year-old UFC and Bellator veteran.
"I've been saying this for a long time, I feel like we have deserved more,” Page said. “I hate hearing stories of fighters getting to what is the pinnacle of your career, in terms of the UFC, and still being broke. That just shouldn't exist. Unless you're just completely terrible with money, it just shouldn't exist that you're struggling from fight to fight, and it just shouldn't be a thing. ... The only thing I can say is it's disappointing more than anything.”
Page is 3-1 in the UFC and is coming off back-to-back victories over Jared Cannonier and Sharabutdin Magomedov. He recently
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