Why do boxers make more than MMA fighters?

Written by John S. Nash

Why do boxers make more than MMA fighters? Is it even true that they do? It seems to be the common perception, based on the enormous purses reported by the likes of a Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao. At the same time, one can just as easily point to the $10,000 to show and $10,000 to win minimums that a fighter on a UFC prelim will earn and compare it to the $1,500 purse of a boxer on a HBO prelim and ask if it isn't perhaps boxing that pays less overall.

The bragging rights that fans seek when they make these comparisons are silly, to be sure, but comparing the two sports does make sense when considering the fact that there is nothing else to compare them to. Unlike major league sports which involve multiple (unionized) athletes employed by an individually owned team which competes in a league against other individually owned teams, prizefighting is conducted between two individuals contracted for a contest to be presented by a promoter.

The problem with the comparisons we see made between boxing and MMA is that they involve only the smallest percentage of actual prizefighters. The fact that Floyd Mayweather made a guaranteed $100 million for a single bout tells us only that Floyd Mayweather is doing very well and nothing about how the rest of the professional boxers are compensated. The fact that a UFC prelim fighter makes more than a boxer on the prelims means very little if there are more main card opportunities that pay better for boxers.

In an attempt to come up with a more complete picture of the current pay distribution in both boxing and MMA, I requested from the Athletic Commissions of Nevada, Florida, and California all of the payouts for professional boxing and MMA events held in their states in 2015. While Nevada and Florida were able to meet my request, due to the number of events California held, they were unable to supply me with the full year. Narrowing my request, and collecting several payouts on my own, I did end up with 6 months worth of payouts for California.

The result was the payout info for 148 professional events (58 MMA and 90 boxing) which gave us 2,146 total purses (826 MMA and 1,320 boxing), which ranged from $0 all the way up to Mayweather's $100 million. This represents roughly 10% of all MMA events and 15% of all boxing events held under the Association of Boxing Commissions last year.

Some of the purse info is obviously incomplete, since we could only use what was reported. Several MMA fighters and boxers at the highest levels of the sport receive pay-per-view points, while some at the very bottom are only paid on consignment with tickets. In both cases I went with the reported purse amount, since neither amount is guaranteed. (A future article will delve into the amount of money UFC fighters actually make when we include non-disclosed pay, both contractual and discretionary.)

For boxing, the combined total amount paid from the 1,320 boxing purses was $228,291,452 with an individual purse average of $172,948. This is skewed more than a little by the enormous payouts Floyd Mayweather (who's reported purses were $100 million and $32 million for his two bouts in 2015) and Manny Pacquiao (who's reported purse was $25 million for his match against Mayweather) received. If you remove their three reported purses from last year (which totaled $157 million) then the combined total for the other 1,317 boxing purses was $71,291,452 which averages out to $54,132.

A more telling statistic than the mean average for what most boxers earn is the median average. The median average in 2015 for a boxer in our three states was $3,250.

For mixed martial arts the combined total of the 826 purses was $17,936,216 for a mean average of $21,714 per purse. The median average for MMA fighters was even lower than that of boxers, a meager $1,250.

When looking specifically at only UFC fighters, the average was much higher with the mean being $63,651 and the median $28,000.

The median average for all 2,146 prizefighters purses was $2500.

While it is readily apparent that most athletes from both sports make very little, with the mode being only $1,000, it appears as if MMA fighters on average are worse off than their boxing counterparts. Of the 1,320 boxing purses we looked at, 299 (or 23%) of them were for $1,000 or less, while of the 826 MMA fighter purses 400 (48%) were for $1,000 or less. Even though MMA fighters payouts made up only 38% of the total collected they were 57% of all prizefighters that were paid $1,000 or less on a bout.

The reverse was mostly true as well, with a much higher number of boxers occupying the very top of the pay ladder. Of the top 100 purses, those making $116,000 or more, 68 were paid to boxers. Of the 19 biggest purses, all were paid to boxers. The highest reported MMA purse was Anderson Silva and his $800,000 from UFC 183, which was tied with three boxers for 20th place on our list of highest paid purse.

“While it is readily apparent that most athletes from both sports make very little, it appears as if MMA fighters on average are worse off than their boxing counterparts.”

These numbers are undoubtedly distorted by the fact that much of what the top MMA fighters make is not reported to athletic commissions. While boxers payouts are also underreported (Mayweather, Pacquiao, Alvarez, and Cotto were all thought to have made much more than what was reported publicly thanks to foreign television and shares in the pay-per-view revenue) it seems to be an even bigger issue with the very top UFC fighters. According to several sources with intimate knowledge of the contracts of top MMA fighters, after combining reported pay with PPV bonuses and side agreements, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, and Conor McGregor each earned between $4 million to $5 million for three of their matches held in Nevada last year. This would be enough to put those three purses on the list of top 10 payouts in California, Florida, and Nevada last year (but not enough for any of them to make the top 5).

Where MMA does much better is when one looked at that upper middle class of prizefighters. If we use the UFC's current minimum of $10,000 as the threshold for entry into the upper middle class, then of the 826 MMA fighter payouts, 255 (31%) reached this class compared to 345 of the 1,320 for boxing (26%). Just as noteworthy was the fact that approximately 90% of those $10,000 or more purses in MMA belonged to fighters in the UFC.

For payouts of $200,000, the amount Lorenzo Fertitta described as belonging to a mid-tier UFC fighter, commission reports showed that 21 MMA fighters received this amount or more. This represents 2.5% of the total MMA fighter purses examined. All 21 of them were also UFC fighters. (One Bellator fighter, Tito Ortiz, did report a purse of over $200,000 last year but it fell outside the 6 month range used for California.) In comparison, reported purses for boxing showed that 50 boxers, representing about 3.8% of our total boxing purses, were paid $200,000 or more last year.

So what can we make of all these numbers? The most obvious is that boxers, on average, appear to make more. Or at least they do in these three states (and there is little suggest this wouldn't be the same throughout the rest of the United States). What is also apparent is that almost all the high paying purses in MMA are concentrated in the UFC (with the few outside the UFC in Bellator and to a lesser extent WSOF). These two statistics are likely connected.

When I asked managers, promoters, and attorneys from both industries why MMA fighters seemed to make less the same answers were offered again and again: lack of competition, the power of the UFC brand, and the presence of federal law covering boxing.

One reason not given but which you see in raised in comment threads often was the idea that boxers made more because boxing generated more money. This was shot down by the promoters I spoke to who pointed out that, with the exception of the Mayweather-Pacquiao megafight, over the last few years the UFC has seen higher revenues than boxing in the United States. The UFC's FOX deal pays almost twice as much as that of the HBO and Showtime's current boxing budgets combined. The UFC regularly sells more payperviews and generates more revenue per year than boxing does. The UFC also collect revenue from sources that most boxing promoters do not, such as video games, merchandise, and gyms.

Amongst MMA managers the word "monopoly" was used repeatedly to describe the current MMA market. While people can argue if the term monopoly is apt or not, and there is a lawsuit currently under way to determine if the UFC has and abuses market power, it is very hard to underestimate how much the UFC dominates the market of mixed martial arts. While competitors like World Series of Fighting and Bellator do exist, the competition they offer seems very limited. Estimates for the WSOF and Bellator's combined yearly revenue is roughly 1/20th that of the UFC. Somewhat understandable when one realizes that, according to the Fight Matrix rankings, every male fighter in the top three of their division and roughly 85% of all top 10 fighters in the ten divisions that the UFC promotes are under contract with the UFC.

As the Deutsche Bank Memorandum to potential lenders clearly explained "Based on all comparable metrics, UFC is clearly the ‘800 pounds gorilla' in the MMA industry."

One of the reasons for the UFC's market domination is the strength of their brand - a brand partly built on its legendary early tournament days and its identity as the first MMA promotion. Lorenzo explained this specific point in a March, 2009 interview to Fighters Only magazine:

“I had my attorneys tell me that I was crazy because I wasn’t buying anything. I was paying $2 million and they were saying ‘What are you getting?’ And I said ‘What you don’t understand is I’m getting the most valuable thing that I could possibly have, which is those three letters: UFC. That is what’s going to make this thing work. Everybody knows that brand, whether they like it or they don’t like it, they react to it.”

The 2007 Deutsche Bank Memorandum detailed the importance of this brand strength when it came to negotiating with their fighters:

“Q: How does UFC balance the retention of the best MMA fighters without overpaying?

A: In summary, the UFC brand is more recognizable than the sum of its individual fighters, as evidenced by its ability to nearly sell out venues even before the announcing the main card to the public. As such, given the power of the brand, fighters are relatively interchangeable at events without affecting the market demand. When no individual fighter can dramatically affect the economics of the event, the UFC believes that it retains the leverage to contain costs when needed.”

The strength of the UFC's brand has only grown since 2007. Looking at the Google Trends search that Phil McKenzie has posted one can see that while "MMA" has long lagged behind "UFC" as a search term, it still rose from 2004 until around 2011, roughly the time of Strikeforce's sale to Zuffa. Since then searches for "MMA" has decreased while those for "UFC" have only grown. This decrease in interest in "MMA" and increase in "UFC" may also explain why the number of ABC MMA events has also decreased every year since 2011.

Brand strength is not the only advantage the UFC has over boxing promoters. The business model for MMA, based partly on the pro wrestling model, is one that benefits them as promoters.

"Not even a promoter," Warriors Boxing executive Leon Margules explained to me. "They are a promoter, regulator, sanctioning body, everything."

According to long time boxing promoter (and brief MMA promoter) Gary Shaw, "Boxing purses are higher because we don't have a league. UFC is their own league and they appoint their own champion who is going to fight for the title. Everything is done within while in boxing we have different sanctioning bodies."

"The UFC owns their fighters. And I guess Bellator owns their fighters. So they can pay whatever they want because if you don't fight for the UFC, which is the king of mixed martial arts in the United States and maybe around the world, who do you fight for? If I don't want you, you go to Arum, or you go to K2 or you got to Golden Boy. You go somewhere else."

When one looks at boxing it becomes obvious that no single promoter dominates the landscape (no matter how hard PBC is trying) to the degree that the UFC does MMA. Top Rank, Golden Boy, Mayweather Promotions, Roc Nation, Kathy Duva's Main Event, Lou DiBella, Gary Shaw, Yvon Michel, and Jean Bedard's Interbox are all promoting major boxers in the United States and Canada. In addition K2, Eddie Hearn's Matchroom, Frank Warren's Box Nation, Fernando Betron, Team Sauerland and other major promoters are competing with those promoters for boxers outside the ABC.

In MMA almost every top fighter, with the exception of a very small handful, is in the UFC. This concentration of top fighters in the UFC also helps explain the discrepancy we see between boxing and UFC prelim purses: UFC prelims are filled with fighters that would often be fighting on main cards under a multitude of boxing promoters.

As an example, at last years Miguel Cotto vs. Saul Alvarez card, the lowest paid boxers were Jose Naranjo, who earned $2,000, and Hector Tanajara, who was paid $4,000. Low in comparison to any UFC fighter to be sure. Going into their super featherweight bout though Naranjo was also 3-1-1 while Tanajara was sporting a 3-0 record. With records like that it's doubtful they would be in the UFC at all if they were MMA fighters.

Instead, the 'UFC caliber' boxers are sprinkled across numerous events held by the many major promoters. According to BoxRec Lou DiBella was involved with the promotion of 29 events last year. Oscar De La Hoya 42 events. Bob Arum 56.

The idea that the UFC's place in the market is the result of their ability to act as a promoter, regulatory body, and sanctioning body all at once goes hand-in-hand with the arguments behind the Muhammad Ali Expansion Act. In remarks that will make the supporters of that legislation smile, Leon Margules, Gary Shaw, and Lou DiBella all cited the Muhammad Ali Reform Boxing Act as the major reason boxers earned more. (Not all boxing promoters agree with this though - Keith Veltre, CEO of Roy Jones Jr Boxing Promotions, was on the Lineup MMA podcast arguing that the Ali Act does nothing for boxers and would not doing anything for MMA fighters either.)

This seems somewhat dubious considering that the Ali Act currently is not enforced by either the Federal government or the Association of Boxing Commissions. But according to boxing promoters this hasn't stopped it from having an impact on the industry, specifically the provisions that require disclosure by promoters.

According to all of the boxing promoters I spoke to, the disclosure of at least some of these revenue sources (here is an example of what one state commission requires to be disclosed) has led to a more level playing field for boxers negotiating with promoters. As Margules explained "In boxing we negotiate the purse based on those revenue sources. Everyone knows what they are, everybody knows what ESPN pays, everybody knows what Showtime and Fox pays."

"They're going to say," Shaw said to me, "if [a fight] is making a thousand dollars you can't just pay me $200 to make $800. In the UFC, they have no idea what the pay-per-view are doing. There's no disclosure act, so you can pay guys whatever you want. If you are the only gas station in town you can charge whatever you want."

One fighter (at least the only UFC fighter who was willing to comment publicly) who agreed with the idea that disclosure would have a big impact on the industry was Tim Kennedy. "Something as simple as letting fighters see the revenue would drastically change the pay scale."

Disclosure most definitely help, but the amount to which it would is up for debate. Right now, with the lack of competition in the industry, all it may lead to is the disclosure that the UFC is making a lot of money while the other promotions are bringing in very little.

The question for what is the solution to low pay in MMA is not an easy one to answer. The Ali Act, antitrust lawsuits, unionization, and fighters testing the market have all been proposed as fixes but it's hard to know what impact they will really have. For some the fix may be worse than the problem. For others, a solution may target a symptom but ignore the real source.

Based on their position in the market, it seems plausible that the UFC could actually pay less if they wish. It's a situation that is not lost on several MMA managers, who were complimentary to the UFC for being more generous than they had to be, considering the lack of leverage most fighters had. Ironically too, the UFC position in the market very likely limits how much MMA managers can charge their clients. The fact that there is very little career/fight management to be done for UFC fighters compared to that of boxers who have to negotiate with multiple promoters, sanctioning bodies and broadcast partners, has led to MMA managers having to charge less for their services. The same holds true for sanctioning bodies, where the UFC's ownership of their own titles means sanctioning fees are no longer the responsibility of an MMA fighter.

The sad truth is most MMA fighters make less than boxers, a sport that itself has a long and terrible history of taking advantage of its athletes. The even sadder truth is that matching boxing may be the best thing MMA fighters can ask for.

*This article originally appeared on Bloody Elbow. It was written by John Nash on Aug. 23, 2016