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MMA all-time fight salaries
By Zach Arnold | August 5, 2009
In this week’s edition of The Observer, Dave Meltzer wrote the following:
There was no “$30 million” offer, although if he won the championship, the sport continued to draw and he was a major draw, he could have earned more than that. UFC wanted a six fight deal, but offered three fights, figuring it would be an easier deal to conclude since Emelianenko’s side would see it as him being locked up for less time. They offered on 7/28, about a $2 million guarantee, plus a sliding percentage based on PPV buys. The first fight offered was with Brock Lesnar for the championship. If the show did 800,000 buys, a huge disappointment considering Lesnar’s status right now, Emelianenko would still come out of it with well over $3 million. If it did 1.5 million buys, he’d get more than $5 million, the biggest one-night payoff in the sport’s history.
In regards to the magical $5 million USD figure, both Hidehiko Yoshida and Naoya Ogawa were supposedly paid that much money for their Man Festival fight a few years ago in the PRIDE ring. Lesnar, no doubt, made a dollar figure similar to that amount for UFC 100 given the estimated 1.7 million PPV buys and how much per buy he got along with his base salary.
Topics: M-1, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 7 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
*waits for Ivan to bash Dave Meltzer again while renewing his subscription at the same time*
The article say MORE than 5 million, which I do believe would be a record.
I’m watching a show on Sportsnet. They put up the UFC’s alleged offer on the screen. The first bullet point: $5 million per fight.
Meanwhile on their website, they say: $3-6 million.
http://www.sportsnet.ca/mma/2009/08/04/showdown_collatoral_damage/
Very interesting.
Either way you slice it, I don’t see how Strikeforce will come close to giving Fedor and M-1 anywhere near that much.
Why does M-1 insist on this co-promotion clause?
[…] Dave Meltzer via FightOpinion: There was no “$30 million” offer, although if he won the championship, the sport continued to […]
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