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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The Nevada Athletic Commission has released the disclosed payroll figures for Saturday's UFC Fight Night 82 event, which hit Las Vegas' MGM Grand Garden Arena and aired live on Fox Sports 1, emailing the list of payouts to MMATorch on Monday.
Topping the night's officially disclosed earnings was co-main event winner Roy Nelson, who took home $125,000 for his decision win over Jared Rosholt. Only four other fighters received six-figure paydays on the card, with Joseph Benavidez, Mike Pyle, Ovince St. Preux, and Johny Hendricks each taking in just over $100K. Main event winner Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson took just $48,000 for his first round victory over Hendricks.
The full list of payouts for the event, totaling $1,092,000, is below:
Penick's Analysis: UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta recently made an asinine statement that the "mid-tier" in the UFC was making $200,000 per fight and fighting three times a year for a "mid-tier" average salary for their fighters coming at $600,000 a year. It's a categorically false figure, and when you see these types of numbers that's made even more clear. Johny Hendricks is a former champion, and if he'd won this fight he'd have hit that $200K mark, and would have been the only fighter on the card anywhere close to that number. Hendricks, a former champion still in the top five into this event, is not a mid-tier guy, and yet he was still below the figure cited by Fertitta. If they want to consider that a mid-tier figure, great, but then they need to actually pay a ton more fighters at that level, which right now is something that's just not happening.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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