Conor Benn’s $15 million purse from Zuffa Boxing is still making waves amongst UFC fighters, despite parent company TKO assuring its investors that the money is coming directly from Saudi Arabia.
That may relieve stockholders, but UFC fighters don’t particularly care where the money is coming from, they just see a smaller, less profitable side project where boxers are getting splashed with cash while they continue to wait for Paramount+ money to trickle down.
U.K. star Michael “Venom” Page came into
the UFC with big hopes of being pushed to the top of the promotion. Two years in, and he’s struggled to secure fights at all in his weight class and is set to fight against the tough but unranked and unknown Sam Patterson next. Maybe that’s why he’s been so willing to speak out regarding the Benn situation … he already believes he’s on the outs with management, so what harm could it do?
“It’s just hurtful to see the money go that way for somebody that, for me, is not at the top of his field,” Page told Sky Sports. “He’s a great boxer. I’m a fan of his. I love watching his his fights because he’s always exciting. He always gives it all. But in that division, he’s nowhere near the best.”
“You’ve given that amount of money to somebody, I’d say, is not the best, but then you got people over here [in UFC] that are at the top. I’m gonna use Francis Ngannou simply because that’s an easy one … A heavyweight champion of the world, and he was broke and having to borrow money. Those are the kind of stories that I feel like they could fix that easily. That just shouldn’t exist.”
Page pointed to the fighters at the very bottom of the payscale, those entering into the UFC on contracts as low as $10k to show and $10k to win. Take into consideration taxes and expenses, and that’s tough to make work.
“I feel like it’s an easy fix,” Page added. “Like, you just give guys what they deserve. It doesn’t have to be, like, millions and millions and millions. But to hear when people come in and they’re on 12k / 12k, and some people are coming from the UK, so twelve thousand dollars is not the same when you when you convert it all and bring it back and tax and so on. These are guys that have now gotten to the UFC, but still have to do door work.”
“It’d be nice to just see guys get to this level, like in any other industry, they get to its highest level and finances allow them to train better, allows them to become better athletes and put on better shows … and certain things are covered. And that’s it.”
“So when you see somebody get paid that amount of money from the same person that’s not paying you on this side, it’s just disheartening.”
This won’t be the last time you see UFC fighters talking about this. As Zuffa Boxing expands and we see more Saudi mega-shows get booked up, the cognitive dissonance of seeing boxers getting paid tens of millions while many big UFC fighters struggle to make ten million over their career will become harder and harder to ignore.
