FACEBOOK TWITTER RSS APP PODCAST Opinion & Analysis : Staff Columnists COLUMNIST: Dana White says 18 UFC fighters make $1 million a year, so let's figure out who they are

Jan 22, 2010 - 9:11:04 PM

By Jason Schielke, MMATorch columnist

In a recent article in Esquire magazine, Dana White made a statement that he has 18 fighters making over $1 million a year:

"White estimates that eighteen of his ultimate fighters earn in the millions per annum. Many others make in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. New guys make fifty to seventy-five, depending where you are in the pecking order."

This made me very curious…who are making over a million a year? I thought there were a few that were obvious, but 18 seemed, to me at least, a little high. So I spent way too much time researching this to figure out who these 18 fighters are.

First, I figured out who make the most disclosed pay and bonuses in 2009:

George St. Pierre: $800k
Lyoto Machida: $585k
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira: $460k
Brock Lesnar: $400k
Quinton Jackson: $385K
Randy Couture: $310K

Now there were a few in the $200k range, but I'm not going to include them just yet.

The biggest problem I had while figuring disclosed pay is that UFC's 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, and 107 had no disclosed pay. So for this, I went back and figured an average of what a fighter was making in 2008 and use that as their base pay for an event in which they fought that did not have a disclosed pay amount.

Please note that these are estimates. All fighters who had an included estimated pay is denoted with a *.

George St. Pierre: $800K
*Dan Henderson: $600K
Lyoto Machida: $585K
*Shogun Rua: $565k
*Randy Couture: $560K
*Chuck Liddell: $500K
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira: $460K
*Forrest Griffin: $435K
Brock Lesnar: $400K
*Anderson Silva: $400k
Quinton Jackson: $385K
*B.J. Penn: -$310K
*Tito Ortiz: $250K
*Diego Sanchez: $225K
Rich Franklin: $210K
Wanderlei Silva: $210K

Now here is when things get a little tricky. It is widely accepted that the main draws on any given card are given a cut of the pay-per-view revenue. According to FighterLinks.com, this is how the PPV bonuses are distributed:

Up to 100K buys: $0
100K-175K: @ $1 = $75K
175K-300K: @ $1.50 = 187K
300K-330K: @ $2 = 60K
330K+ = (# of buys -330K) X $3

So to make it a little simpler, if a PPV hits more than 330K buys, which all of the events in 2009 did, the fighter would automatically get the first three bonuses ($332K) plus $3 for every buy in excess of 330K. Since nobody knows for sure who gets these bonuses, I am going to assume that if the main event featured a title bout, the champion, or champions in some cases, receive their cut based on the table above. The title challenger or a "name” fighter on the card would receive a $332K bonus. Using this theory, these are the fighters who made the Millionaire's list:

George St. Pierre: $6.684M
Brock Lesnar: $4.542M
Frank Mir: $4.232M
B.J. Penn: $3.554M
Anderson Silva: $2.024M
Lyoto Machida: $1.759M
Rashad Evans: $1.447M
Shogun Rua: $1.229M
Rich Franklin: $1.206M
Forrest Griffin: $1.099M

Other notables:

Dan Henderson: $932K
Randy Couture: $892K
Chuck Liddell: $832K
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira: $792K
Quinton Jackson: $777K
Tito Ortiz: $582K
Diego Sanchez: $557K
Wanderlei Silva: $542K

After spending three days digging up information and crunching numbers (my head hurts), the ten millionaires I came up with doesn't surprise me too much, although the dollar amounts for a few are probably a little inflated. The other eight, with the exception of Diego Sanchez, I could see being in the Millionaire's Club as well. However, with Dana White being as tight lipped as he is about what he pays his fighters, we'll never truly know who is making the big bucks and who is getting hosed.

So who do you think? Are there any fighters who don't belong on the list? Are there names that you think should be there? Do you have any extra Tylenol? As always, give us your feedback on our Facebook page and JasonSchielke@gmail.com!

[Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira art credit Cory Gould (c) MMATorch]

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