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Regular UFC fans are familiar with the post-fight bonus system. Some more dedicated followers of the best MMA promotion may have also heard of the discretionary bonuses given to fighters over the years.
But while the recipients of the Fight of the Night and the Performance of the Night, announced at the end of each event for Outstanding Efforts, each take home the announced $ 50,000, little is known about the discretionary bonuses.
In chatting with The Post on Wednesday, Dana White opened up about a topic he usually doesn’t discuss: money, especially money that goes to his stable of fighters. This involved shedding light on discretionary bonuses.
For most of the 41 events organized in 2020, four bonuses of $ 50,000 “of the night” were distributed. Five have been awarded twice and six have been awarded at a particularly stock-rich UFC event on ESPN in July, with middleweights Robert Whittaker and Darren Till. This represents a total of $ 8.4 million in announced bonuses.
But the UFC also told the Post that the total bonus payout for the calendar year affected by the pandemic reached $ 18 million, including previously announced bonuses. This leaves $ 9.6 million.
White said the general practice is that for “everyone who delivered on the card, I write a check” that ranges from $ 4,000 to $ 25,000 each, “depending on what I think about their fight.”
“I’ll give you an example,” White says. “There’ll be a night where crazy stuff happens all over the map, then we’ll have to choose what we thought [were] the $ 50,000 [bonus recipients], but someone else was in the running. They could have had it too. And it depends, I will write them between 10,000 and 25,000 dollars. “
With 456 fights played last year in the Octagon – and two fighters per fight, of course – the average discretionary bonus is around $ 10,526 per fighter per fight.
The bonuses advertised have been set at $ 50,000 since the start of 2013, when White said the UFC wanted to normalize the figure which typically ranged from $ 40,000 to $ 75,000 in 2011 and 2012; on three occasions in 2011, the amount reached or exceeded $ 100,000.
White told MMA Junkie in 2013 that the reason for standardizing the value of bonuses, which he described as “a giveaway,” was in the spirit of fairness to fighters who weren’t scheduled on a night when a larger amount of bonus was distributed.
“It was right to keep them straight all the way through so whatever map you’re fighting over is the same bonus,” White said at the time, adding that “no one ever complained.” the imbalance of amounts between the combat card and the combat card.
Unlike Performance of the Night and Fight of the Night, the awarding of individual discretionary bonuses is not made public. The fighters themselves rarely talk about the practice, although on rare occasions they do offer insight into how these bonuses play out. After accidentally getting dirty in a 2017 loss to Felice Herrig, Justine Kish explained how White contacted the next day to check in, likely realizing what she called “a little bit of humiliation behind what’s happening.” was past ”and hinting that there was a bonus addition to come.
“The other thing that’s good is that Dana hinted that I had a discretionary bonus, which is a giveaway, for my performance,” Kish told the Domenick Nati Show in the days. who followed the fight. “So the UFC is really good at giving out little secret bonuses – for me at least – here and there. … I didn’t ask, and I didn’t ask how much it was going to cost or anything, so we’ll see.
White confirmed to the Post that he generally does not feel inclined to publicize the amounts paid to fighters, saying he has resisted proposals from UFC employees to be more willing to discuss money.
“Obviously there is a lot of money at stake and believe me a lot of people, including people who work for me, have said, ‘If you just wanted to say publicly what you are doing,’ and I say, ‘but I don’t care. ” White said. “It’s nobody’s business what these guys do.”
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