UFC CEO, Dana White, is no longer involved with fighter contract negotiations.
That isn’t exactly “news” to anyone familiar with the promotion’s day-to-day operations or the role of UFC CBO Hunter Campbell. But that hasn’t stopped dopey streamers from latching on to hot-button issues like UFC fighter pay in a half-baked attempt to retain subscribers who got bored of watching them play video games all day.
White is too busy recruiting WWE wannabes to worry about what Manolo Zecchini is getting paid.
“We were a small business,” White told SPEED on YouTube. “We started to grow the relationships with [fighters like] Chuck Liddell and Matt Hughes [in] the early days right up to (Conor) McGregor, Ronda Rousey, Cowboy (Cerrone) and the list goes on and on. Obviously it’s grown and I have completely removed myself from the negotiating part of fighter contracts. I got to a point where this isn’t fun anymore. I’m lucky that I’m at a point in my life and my career where I can just deal with the fun stuff that I like to do.”
That may explain why White appears to be “checked out” during UFC video promos.
Whether or not the UFC antitrust lawsuit has White and Co. attempting to retcon the promotion’s organizational hierarchy is unclear, but fighter pay remains a point of contention regardless of who’s signing the contracts. Especially when the decision makers are bagging billions of bucks in content deals.
