How The UFC Screws Its Fighters No. 1
Or The UFC Is Moving Your Fight Or An Entire Event, Tough Shit If You Don't Like It
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This post is first in what will be a series on how the UFC screws its fighters.
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Ah, the UFC, where one day you’re fighting on an eagerly anticipated fight card featuring two title fights and the next day you’re facing off in the co-main event of an ESPN+ streaming card. That’s the situation Derek Brunson and Edmen Shahbazyan found themselves in earlier this week.
The top-10 ranked middleweight scrappers were scheduled to compete at UFC 248, which is headlined by Israel Adesanya vs. Yoel Romero and co-main evented by Weili Zhang and Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Instead, Brunson and Shahbazyan are now competing on a card headlined by Alistair Overeem vs. Walt Harris. That’s a downgrade.
UFC 248 takes place on March 7 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. That event should draw somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 fans. UFC Fight Night 172, which is the event the Brunson vs. Shahbazyan contest was moved to, takes place in Portland, Oregon on April 11. The UFC’s most recent trip to Portland took place in 2016. That card drew a reported 6,240 fans.
It’s almost a guarantee that Brunson and Shahbazyan will receive far less exposure on the ESPN+ streaming card than they would have on the UFC 248 PPV card.
The bad thing about this is that the fighters most likely had no say in the move and they will probably not be compensated for the switch either.
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I base the assumption the fighters had no say in the move on the fact the UFC moved the entire UFC 232 fight card from Las Vegas to California in December 2018. That move took place on 6 days’ notice when the Nevada State Athletic Commission would not license Jon Jones. Instead of removing the Jones vs Gustafsson light heavyweight title fight from the card and headlining the event with the Cris Cyborg vs. Amanda Nunes superfight for Cyborg’s featherweight title, the promotion decided it was best to inconvenience the fighters and their camps and all the fans who had purchased tickets for the Vegas event.
When Nunes voiced her displeasure on the move, because the switch would cost the fighters between nine and 13 percent of their purses in taxes, UFC president Dana White was less than sympathetic.
“Who is going to pay my income tax in California?” White asked when questioned about the tax situation. “It is what it is. It’s either that or not fight and nobody gets paid, nobody does anything. It is what it is. We had to move it. Listen, it’s costing everybody more money. It is what it is.”
White’s response was tone deaf and asinine. Nunes was paid a reported $350,000 for her win over Cyborg at UFC 232. In comparison White made over $300 million when the UFC was sold in 2016 and recently pocketed $3 million via a dividend payout. If White had been taxed at 90 percent on his earnings from the sale of the UFC, he would still have made $30 million. In other words, White trying to compare his tax situation to that of the fighters is something no one should take seriously.
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Also, the UFC “had to move” the card? That’s a straight up lie. The promotion could have easily went on with the Cyborg vs. Nunes bout as a main event and the only one who would have been inconvenienced in that situation would have been Gustafsson, who could have been compensated for the fight falling through. But that didn’t happen.
This UFC 232 debacle shows how UFC fighters are at the mercy of White and the promotion. If the fighters are told to jump, they have to jump. If White says they didn’t jump high enough, they have to keep jumping until they satisfy White.
Going back to the situation Brunson and Shahbazyan find themselves in, not only are they losing out on exposure it has also forced them to adjust their fight camps, travel plans and weight cuts — at the very least. The Portland event is more than a month after UFC 248. That’s a pain in the ass for two fighters who are not at the top of the UFC pay scale. Brunson took home $190K for his most recent fight. Shahbazyan’s most recent disclosed payout was $32K for his UFC 239 win. He has fought once since then, he scored a victory in that bout.
Now, if the UFC fighters had a collective bargaining agreement, they could negotiate terms into their contracts for fight moves and adjustments so they could be compensated for unexpected changes to fight cards or fight locations. Until then, the UFC will take advantage of the fighters and the fighters will have no way to pushback other than through the media.
