Cub Swanson has no beef with the UFC.
“The UFC does really generous things,” Swanson recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “They paid for my surgery. They took care of everything. They made sure I went to a great doctor, so I’m not going to bash them. They’ve been amazing to me.”
Swanson, however, is a veteran of the fight game who’s been at this since 2004. And while he’s still highly competitive, he knows at age 36 – and trying to return from a torn ACL and meniscus – that he only has so many years left in the sport.
That helps put into focus the issues surrounding UFC fighter pay, which have raged across headlines in recent weeks, with Jorge Masvidal and Jon Jones leading the way with demands that the UFC share more of the money their blood, sweat and tears produce.
“If I’m going to think about longevity, when I retire I want to make sure that I have something, you know?” Swanson said. “And I’ve been fortunate enough to have people around me who have made smart investments, and I’ll be OK, you know? But I’m not a millionaire. I think there’s a lot of room for growth, and I’d like to see that happen.”
At the heart of the issue is the UFC’s pay scale. It’s been documented that fighters receive somewhere around 18 percent of company revenue depending on the year, whereas players in other major sports leagues – such as the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball – receive something close to a 50-50 revenue split with owners, give or take a few points in either direction.
Swanson understands that it took time for labor in those other sports to build up to that sort of revenue split, and he believes UFC fighters should make incremental progress toward that goal.
“I saw Masvidal speak up against the fighter pay that he’d like to get paid more, which, you know, everybody would,” Swanson said. “So all I really want to say on that is that, you know, in other professional sports there’s a big split, 50-50 roughly, depending on the sport and everything. And obviously they worked their way up to that, so I think if the UFC is profiting this much, I think we can come to terms on like a 25 percent, 30 percent and work our way up, and I think that’s beyond reasonable.”
To get to that position, fighters would need to form an association in order gain the degree of leverage to change the calculus in the UFC’s labor equation. For his part, Swanson says he knows a guy.
“I’ve always said I thought Brian Stann was a perfect leader to represent the fighters,” Swanson said. “He was just a very moral person, and he would stop and go, ‘Hey, guy’s, that’s not right.’ And you’d think about it and go, hey, man, I think it’s the military, and truly I think the fighters need a group of people that represent them, they will negotiate on everyone’s behalf and just make sure that we’re set up for long term. That’s all.”
Cub Swanson on UFC fighter pay: 'There's a lot of room for growth'