Planet Tapout 8.21.07: It's All About the Chedda!
Posted by Lotfi Sariahmed on 08.21.2007
What's keeping fighters from earning the same paydays as boxers? Could we see a multi-million dollar payday in MMA? Lotfi Sariahmed examines those questions and more in this week's Planet Tapout! All that plus Miscellaneous Musings and This Week in Fight Picks! This week's edition of Planet Tapout is Quinton Jackson approved (unofficially)!
Welcome to the MMA column that won the Planet Tapout Excellence in Journalism Award! I am Lotfi Sariahmed and this is my humble abode called Planet Tapout. No mailbag this week but with the lull in real big MMA action that's not a huge surprise. But as always you can send your thoughts, musings, love, hate, recipe ideas or otherwise to PlanetTapout@gmail.com . Now lets light this candle.
Ah the money. The Green. The dough. The loot. Or Quinton Jackson's personal favorite, "The Chedda." With UFC 74 comes the first of a few big shows for the fans starting this Saturday and going through the month of September. With every big card comes the announcement of fighter salaries soon after and everyone quickly compares how fighters are getting paid to other MMA promotions and to those fighters in that other big combat sport. So the question in this week's Planet Tapout is can MMA fighters bring in the same paydays as boxers?
I was inspired to delve into this topic thanks to Josh Barnett. He was on The Jordan Breen Show recently talking about a bit of everything including fighter salaries. He's one of the most sought after free agents in MMA right now and asked about his status at the time he said he was "like a mercenary." He said the top guys in the sport right now get paid very well. But he mentioned that the ceiling had not been reached yet. He compared the top salaries in MMA to those of boxers citing the Oscar De La Hoya v. Floyd Mayweather fight. In that "fight that saved boxing" De La Hoya and Mayweather were guaranteed almost $35 million combined. Bernard Hopkins received $3 million for his fight against Winky Wright on July 21st. The last really big MMA fight came at UFC 71 when Quinton Jackson took the light heavyweight belt from Chuck Liddell. Jackson made $225,000 while Liddell made $500,000. Both those totals do not include signing bonuses, sponsorships, pay-per-view cuts or other bonuses. Clearly there's just a slight discrepancy between the two sports in terms of purses.
So how does MMA make up the gap? Will the popularity of the sport ever be great enough to where we'll see Quinton Jackson or Chuck Liddell both make millions for their fights? The sport is already making a lot of money. However, revenues would need to increase before we see even the Jacksons, Liddells and Barnetts of the world making millions of dollars. There's no question as to whether or not they deserve to make that sort of money. They put their bodies through hell even before a fight risking a lot to put on a show for the fans. The question here is whether or not the sport CAN increase its revenue to the point where you get these big sponsors for MMA events. Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, Budweiser and a whole list of other corporations like that need to become involved for that to happen. Of course those corporations will most likely end up sponsoring UFC shows given the popularity of the promotion.
The closest the UFC got to the big name sponsorship was Miller Lite back at I believe UFC 43. Now we have XBOX 360 for the IFL and Mickey's (Miller Lite owns Mickey's) is in the UFC. But the sport still lacks that really big sponsor. No Coke, no Bud, no MacDonalds. So how does the sport increase its revenues?
Put on the best fights of course. The UFC is trying to do that bringing in newly signed fighters from PRIDE with EliteXC as its "closest" competition. But even for the UFC, it's really difficult to sign all the best fighters out there. As long as there are other promotions out there like EliteXC, like Bodog and like K-1, there are other places fighters can choose to go. The UFC can't buy every organization out.
From a fighters' perspective, sometimes a promotion is just going to offer up more money and you can't refuse. But does money take precedence over fighting the best in the world? To be the best you've got to beat the best right? Well according to Barnett in that aforementioned interview, it depends. As a fighter you need to find the right combination of popularity and star power in your promotion, along with getting paid well. Fighter X and Fighter Y could put on the best fight on this small show in the Midwest but if no one sees it, does it even matter? You can't chase fights for the sake of chasing the best fights. On the same token, you can't get that $1 million contract and then go fight cans. That's the situation Fedor finds himself in if he signs for virtually any other organization outside of the UFC. If he signs somewhere else his reputation as the best pound for pound fighter in the world will inevitably take a hit. A fighter has to strike a balance between the right amount of money and competition when choosing where he's going to fight. But even if fighters strike that balance you still run into an even bigger problem.
Promotions need to work together to put on the best fights and that just doesn't look like it's going to happen. There will be some big name fighters who go to other organizations. Denis Kang, one of the top middleweights in the world, is all but confirmed to be on his way to K-1 where he'll fight Kazushi Sakuraba on an upcoming card. So where does that leave the UFC? Unless the UFC somehow manages to sign Matt Lindland, those are two top five middleweights fighting in some other promotion. Anderson Silva could blow through all the rest of the competition the UFC middleweight division has to offer and there will still be questions as to whether or not he's the best in the world. Fans will ask about dream match-ups against Lindland and Kang.
If promotions can't work together to put on these super fights, where's the incentive for the major sponsors to jump on board with MMA? In turn, if there are no major sponsors, "Rampage" isn't exactly about to get some Mayweather-like "chedda." Boxing had the luxury for years of being the only combat sport around and people were drawn to the sport. It was graced with names like Ali, Frazier, Leonard, Hagler and so many others. The fans kept coming to see the great fights and sponsors, in turn, jumped on board. So the boxers have been receiving exorbitant paydays for years now. Despite all of its corruption and all of the fans it lost because of that corruption, boxing is still giving us some good fights. MMA is headed in the right direction putting on bouts the fans want to see. But it's still a VERY new sport. There's no doubt the major corporations are turned off by MMA right now because it's still an unnecessary risk. Why do you want to put your name behind a sport that isn't so far removed from the SEG era? In the end, the fighters dictate the sport and they'll decide where they want to fight. It's up to the promotions to work together and put on fights that fans need to see. There is no De La Hoya v. Mayweather fight in MMA yet in terms of PPV buys and revenue. Once that day comes then the fighters will be paid along the lines of boxers. But it's just not possible right now in MMA.
Miscellaneous Musings!
● This Frank Mir v. Antoni Hardonk fight hurts my head. Mir has been a shell of himself since the motorcycle accident. He's been less than inspiring for his bouts against Dan Christison, Mauricio Cruz and Brandon Vera. But then there's Antoni Hardonk. He beat up a nearly 40 year old Sherman Pendergarst and all of a sudden he has a wicked striking game? Justin McCully exposed his ineptitude on the ground in his last fight taking Hardonk down at will. If Frank Mir were ever going to win another fight, this would be the one to do it. But I'm really just picking him to win and hoping more than anything else.
● Aside from the heavyweight title fight, the biggest fight on the card is the #1 contender fight at welterweight between Josh Koscheck and Georges St. Pierre. It's Koscheck's toughest test to date and St. Pierre's coming off the loss to Matt Serra at UFC 69. But this fight is exponentially more important for Georges St. Pierre. Koscheck is the young guy from The Ultimate Fighter who will get another shot soon enough. You've all heard it before about St. Pierre. The biggest question about him is what's going on between his ears. He should be mentally ready for this bout with Koscheck because now he's chasing the belt again. But if he loses to Koscheck, it will be at least another year before we talk about St. Pierre getting a title shot again.
● Another Randy Couture fight and another big test where he's the underdog. I know Gabriel Gonzaga will give him all he could handle. Heck, Couture said he'd prefer to face Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic because he doesn't pose as many problems as Gonzaga does. "Napao" is a really big heavyweight who's a ground technician. In Couture's last fight with Sylvia, Couture didn't have to worry about his ground game. As if all that weren't enough, all Gonzaga did was knock out "Cro Cop" with a head kick in his last fight. It doesn't look good for Randy does it? Then again, when has it ever looked good for Randy in any of these fights? After the Sylvia fight, I'm not betting against him here.
This Week in Fight Picks!
Marcus Aurelio over Clay Guida
Frank Mir over Antoni Hardonk
Renato "Babalu" Sobral over David Heath
Thales Leites over Ryan Jensen
Kendall Grove over Patrick Cote
Joe Stevenson over Kurt Pellegrino
Georges St. Pierre over Josh Koscheck
Roger Huerta over Alberto Crane UFC Heavyweight Title Fight
Randy Couture over Gabriel Gonzaga
So that does it for another week of Planet Tapout! I think it's been fun. No? You want those 15-20 minutes of your life back? Then tell me. Send me love, hate, musings, recipes and otherwise to PlanetTapout@gmail.com .
Make sure you come back next Tuesday for another edition of the Planet! This week in MMA obviously gives us UFC 74: Respect on Saturday night. But we also have some Canadian fighting too. The Maximum Fighting Championship is putting on a card this weekend, as Victor Valimaki takes on Roger Hollett in the main event. Don't forget about the 2nd edition of Showtime's ShoXC show. This time around Charles "Krazy Horse" Bennett takes on "Joe Boxer" Victor Valenzuela in the main event. Enjoy the fights everybody.
