The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a United States-based company, but mixed martial arts (MMA) is an increasingly global sport.
Indeed, most sections of the globe are represented by the current list of UFC champions and top pound-for-pound athletes. Just reviewing the current champions, we have two athletes from Brazil, two American female champions, two Australians, a pair of champions with Georgian roots, a Chechen mauler, an Englishman, and Valentina Shevchenko representing Kyrgyzstan.
There are currently no male champions from the US, which is quite the sea change from a decade ago. For much of the promotion’s history, the bulk of the champions and top contenders have been American, but that really has changed in recent years. UFC analyst and former US Olympic representative Daniel Cormier has a theory explaining the decline, which in his opinion is a result of the rise in money for collegiate wrestlers and coaching.
Nowadays, top wrestling talents don’t need to fight to make a living.
“I used to think it was impossible that there would be no American fighters in the UFC pound-for-pound top 10,” Cormier began on the UFC 322 weigh-in show (via Home of Fight). “But now there really isn’t a single one. Jon Jones let us all down (laughs). I begged him: ‘Please don’t leave,’ because then he’d still be in the P4P top 10.
“What’s killing us is that colleges started paying wrestlers. In the last 5 years they’ve started paying really well. Now if you’re a good wrestler … When I wrestled at Oklahoma State, you know how much I got paid? They raised my salary from 750 bucks to 1000 a month. Basically, I wrestled for food and housing. Now they pay wrestlers 100 grand. And if you’re a really good wrestler, you can make 300–400 thousand. Even 300K in small rural colleges — they don’t need to go fight anymore.
“There are cases where kids who aren’t even in college yet are making 100–200 thousand. They’re really making money. This kills the pipeline of wrestlers [who could’ve come to MMA]. As a result, in the last 5 years, the only ones who came to MMA were Bo Nickal and Gable Steveson. But Gable tried a bunch of things before MMA and made tons of money off that. Now American wrestlers don’t need to go into fighting to earn. All the American top fighters who were in the P4P rankings were wrestlers — him [points at Edgar], Jones, Usman, Colby, Weidman, Cejudo. They’re all wrestlers! And now there’s no reason for them to go. To succeed in MMA, you need a special type of wrestler — someone who still wants to prove something.”
Though collegiate wrestling wages have risen substantially in recent years, MMA pay has remained fairly stagnant. For a hotshot D-1 All-American wrestler making good money already, it’s a much tougher sell to go fight on the regional scene for a thousand bucks in the hopes of making $10k on Contender Series in the hopes of making $12k and $12k in the actual UFC. Clearly, many young wrestling standouts have decided the juice is not worth the squeeze and are choosing to coach or continue their wrestling careers on the world scene.
Perhaps the UFC’s recent deal with Paramount will improve fighter pay to the point that becoming a UFC fighter is once again an appealing dream for collegiate wrestlers.
