Joey Beltran competed for the UFC ten times and now fights for Bellator, so he has some knowledge about how the sponsorship game works in MMA. According to the man that will co-headline Bellator 143 though, his experience doesn’t exactly match up with some of the stories he’s heard. In fact, he believes that he hasn’t made all that much off of sponsorships at all. He spoke to BJPenn.com about it and was brutally honest about why that might be:
“I mean, I don’t know. I have a little different viewpoint on the whole sponsorship thing. Like I hear these stories of people saying they got like $50,000 to wear a t-shirt or something and I’m like ‘when the f**k did this happen?’ I fought 10 times for the UFC and never got that type of money! I mean not even if you added up all the money from all 10 of my fights would it have resulted in over $60,000 in sponsorship. Maybe it’s because I suck. Maybe it’s because I’m a fat Mexican, I don’t know. So for me and the whole sponsorship thing, it really doesn’t matter and I really don’t care. It is what it is.”
The UFC forcibly re-hauled the sponsorship game earlier this year by signing a deal with Reebok. Bellator is under no such restrictions, but it certainly seems like Beltran isn’t too bothered by things either way.
Beltran meets Kendall Grove in the co-main event of Bellator 143 on September 25th.
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