We’ve come a long way since Royce Gracie was victorious at UFC 1 back in 1993 to taking home a measly $50,000 prize. Make no mistake, $50,000 is nothing to shake a stick at, especially in 1993 pricing, but Gracie also had to win three fights – in one night – to take home the championship of the eight-man tournament.
The UFC odds these days see fighters taking home a whole lot more money – which is definitely a good thing. The UFC has gotten all the way up to a $12,000 minimum salary with a chance to double that with a win, so essentially, even entry-level fighters can almost match what Gracie made by winning the first-ever UFC Tournament with three wins – granted, that was nearly three decades ago.
The big question remains whether UFC salary and pricing have crested – or if this is just the beginning.
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UFC Surpassing Boxing in Popularity – But Not Purses
Just for a little perspective, when Gracie was winning UFC 1 back in 1993 to claim $50,000, Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield had a boxing match a week earlier. Bowe was guaranteed at least $11 million for the fight and Holyfield $9 million, but that’s what 950,000 PPV buys gets you compared to 90,000.
Fast forward nearly 30 years later, and UFC 280, where Islame Makhachef defeated Charles Oliveira, reportedly drew anywhere from 750,000 to close to a million PPV buys. This is where things get tricky, though, as both Makhachef and Oliveira both received slightly over $1 million for the fight. That’s a nice payday but nowhere near the $20 million that Bowe and Holyfield split.
It’s almost not fair to compare the UFC’s modern-day payouts to those of the heavyweight boxing division in its heyday. For one, Bowe vs. Holyfield II was not your average fight as it was coming off what many considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxing matches of all time when Bowe beat Holyfield by UD in a matchup of undefeated boxers in their first matchup.
Another thing that has changed since the early 1990s is how fans consume sports. Love them or hate them, illegal streaming sites and password sharing take a big chunk out of the home buyer revenue for these fights.
All that being said about boxing being the #1 draw in the late 80s and early 90s and people streaming events now, the September 2022 trilogy meeting between middleweight boxers Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin reportedly netted Alvarez $45 million and GGG at least a cool $20 million. Maybe the UFC is just cheap.
UFC Not Hurting for Profits
It remains to be seen why Conor McGregor had the most lucrative UFC purse of all time with his UFC 257 bout against Dustin Poirier – but made nearly 5X that in what was essentially an exhibition boxing match against Floyd Mayweather.
The UFC is not hurting for money, growing each of the last six seasons and finally topping $1 billion in revenue in 2021. The resources definitely seem there to pay fighters more than they are now, but the big issue is that the UFC considers itself the draw – and not the fighters.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship had often sold out venues even before it was announced who was fighting. The fact that their roster is deep and 6-7+ different combinations of fighters would still provide exciting results kind of limits the earning potential of the group as a whole. The UFC also has contractual tiers that make it hard to earn much more beyond that of a set scale.
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the pay of UFC fighters – and it goes both ways. There are some who say a $12,000 minimum salary for a single fight is pretty good pay for what could at most be 17 minutes of actual work (three rounds at five minutes, two one-minute breaks), while others say a $12,000 payday is insulting for somebody getting kicked and punched in the face repeatedly while also considering the weeks of training that went into that 17 minutes of fighting.
Either way, salaries in the UFC are trending in the right direction. The sport remains incredibly popular, and there’s always the potential for revenue to be even higher if the UFC does something like creating its own television channel or streaming app.
