UFC 245 salaries: Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington top list of disclosed paydays

Main event combatants Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington each pocketed $500,000 for their respective efforts at UFC 245.

MMA Junkie recently obtained the list of the disclosed paydays for Saturday night’s card at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas from the Nevada Athletic Commission, which oversaw the event.

UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovksi, who won the belt in the evening’s co-main event, earned $250,000 for his performance. Former champion Max Holloway, who lost the belt, took home a $350,000.

UFC women’s double champion Amanda Nunes pocketed $450,000 for her bantamweight title defense against Germaine de Randamie. Dutch challenger de Randamie earned $100,000.

Former UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo was the fourth highest-paid athlete on the card. Despite losing to Marlon Moraes in his drop to bantamweight, Aldo earned $400,000.

The total disclosed payroll for the event was $4,096,000.

The full list of disclosed UFC 245 paydays included:

• Kamaru Usman: $500,000 (no win bonus)
  def. Colby Covington: $500,000
• Alexander Volkanovski: $250,000 (no win bonus)
  def. Max Holloway: $350,000
• Amanda Nunes: $450,000 (includes $100,000 win bonus)
  def. Germaine de Randamie: $100,000
• Marlon Moraes: $220,000 (includes $110,000 win bonus)
  def. Jose Aldo: $400,000
• Petr Yan: $122,000 (includes $66,000 win bonus) def. Urijah Faber: $250,0000
• Geoff Neal: $62,000 (includes $31,000 win bonus) def. Mike Perry: $90,000
• Irene Aldana: $80,000 (includes $40,000 win bonus) def. Ketlen Vieira: $33,000
• Omari Akhmedov: $110,000 (includes $55,000 win bonus) def. Ian Heinisch: $50,000
• Matt Brown: $160,000 (includes $80,000 win bonus) def. Ben Saunders: $35,000
• Chase Hooper: $48,000 (includes $24,000 win bonus) def. Daniel Teymur: $18,000
• Brandon Moreno: $62,000 (includes $31,000 win bonus) def. Kai Kara-France: $25,000
• Jessica Eye: $96,000 (includes $48,000 win bonus) def. Viviane Araujo: $45,000
• Puna Soriano: $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus) def. Oskar Piechota: $20,000

The figures do not include deductions for items such as insurance, licenses and taxes. Additionally, the figures do not include money paid by sponsors, including the official UFC 245 Promotional Guidelines Compliance pay. They also do not include any other “locker room” or special discretionary bonuses the UFC sometimes pays. They also do not include pay-per-view cuts that some top-level fighters receive.

For example, UFC officials handed out additional $50,000 UFC 245 fight-night bonuses to Yan and Aldana for “Performance of the Night,” and Usman and Covington for “Fight of the Night.”

In other words, the above figures are simply base salaries reported to the commission and do not reflect entire compensation packages for the event.