Something’s wrong when Manny Gamburyan is the highest-paid fighter on the card

While I’m glad that UFC president Dana White made good on his promise that fighters at last Saturday’s WEC 48 Aldo vs. Faber would get a bigger payday than usual, there’s still something rotten in the state of Denmark.

The event exceeded expectations at every level, from the quality of the fights to the number of viewers. It pulled in a gross live gate of close to $800,000 and drew somewhere north of 150,000 pay-per-view buys, close to double what White would’ve settled for a couple of weeks ago.

So with all of the success, something’s out of whack when there are still fighters on the main card who only earn $7,000 for their efforts. Crazier still, Manny Gamburyan cashed the biggest cheque – $101,000 – although that includes an $18,000 win bonus and $65,000 Knockout of the Night bonus.

Now, I’m not begrudging Gamburyan a good payday. He knocked Mike Brown out in stunning fashion, literally and figuratively, and he trains as hard and as long as anybody else. But when featherweight champ Jose Aldo, one of the most exciting, dominating fighters in the sport, only makes 40 grand, half of which was a win bonus, there’s something wrong with the math.

And don’t get me started on the preliminary card fighters, like Demetrius Johnson, who earned just $3,000 for his troubles and doesn’t have the same kind of exposure and thus sponsorship dollars coming his way. And yes, I know that if he was a better fighter he’d be making bigger paydays; that’s not the point. The point is simply that being an MMA fighter just doesn’t pay and no matter how much White and Zuffa want everyone to believe being a WEC fighter is like being an NBA star, that cheque bounces like a rubber ball.