The UFC’s own video game shows how bad fighter pay is!

I’ve said this in a comment before, but I thought I’d write it up, since fighter pay is a hot topic right now.

I was playing career mode in EA’s UFC 3. At first, it really sucked, but I was an unknown fighter, so I thought it made sense. My gym was relatively cheap, and I grabbed whatever fight I could. I could pick my opponent, and since my guy wasn’t a strong submission expert, I tried to pick strikers.

Then, I got on Dana’s radar. He made a “tweet” about wanting to see me in the big time. It still took me about 6 fights to even level up to the next gym, and that was just membership. I got my next contract, but it was nothing stellar. As I started getting bigger, I lost my ability to pick my fights (limited to one opponent), and my camp pretty much took up most of my winnings.

One thing to note: Your camp time allows you to train, learn new moves, rehab, or spar. It also allows you to self promote, volunteer, or promote for the UFC. It’s zero-sum, so if you do all training, you can’t promote. I would often skip a week of camp just to do BS self-promotion to make $10-30k. A PT or rehab was about that price too, so fuck me if I got hurt in training! You can also pick the length of your camp. 4 weeks is about average, once you hit the better opponents, but an injury can be risky. I think 5-6 weeks is max.

Once I became champ (undefeated, naturally) it really got bad. My contract sucked, I was locked into wearing Reebok, and I was contractually obligated to make media appearances. Now, as I mentioned earlier, you can either do media or train. The only way to adequately train and do media, was to pay for an extra week of my fight camp! Yes, pay my camp so I could promote the UFC.

I would often skip promoting the UFC, and if I did, I would get a fine on my final fight purse.

So, at the end of the day, I was a 21-0, two-belt champ with about $400k in the bank. Even with finish bonuses, I would only get bumped a little bit. I never promoted the UFC, and injuries came solely out of my pocket. Oh, and I couldn’t even entertain the idea of a fight sponsor because of Reebok.

Now, these are just fight mechanics, but they pretty much align to how the UFC actually runs. IRL I could obviously try and get a non-fight sponsorship, but that’s only at the top levels. Bottom-line, by the UFC’s own account, my fighter was the GOAT and netted $400k after about ~7 years. Show me another pro sport where the base salary is that…