On the surface, making $20,000 in one night for winning a fight looks like a great deal. Fight four times in a year, win three of the fights, and you’ve almost made a cool six figures.
What the post-fight salaries don’t show is how much work, time and money the fighters put into earning that $10,000 show money and $10,000 win bonus. UFC fighter Myles Jury gave some insight as to what expenses the average MMA fighter incurs in a recent blog post.
“Anyone that thinks this is an easy business for a fighter is sadly mistaken. Although there’s a lot of money to be made in the sport of MMA, there are a lot of expenses just like most businesses,” Jury said.
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Jury went on to break down what expenses like gym fees, medicals, taxes and other miscellaneous expenses do to a fighter’s earnings.
Jury estimated that most gyms charge a fighter 5-10% of their fight purse, that management fees can rise as high as 20%, taxes take off another 30% with coaching fees, medicals and other expenses taking up roughly $2500.
A fighter wins and earns $20,000:
$2,000 (gym / team)
$4,000 (management)
$6,000 (taxes)
$500 (medicals)
$1,000 (coaching)
$1,000 (Misc.)
Total Expenses: $14,500
He made an educated guess using his own experiences that a fighter who has an entry level contract with the UFC ($10,000 show/$10,000 win) will profit $5,500 for a win and $1,500 for a loss.
“As you should’ve noticed, a whole team loses when their fighter loses. Not only emotionally and physically, but financially as well… as you can see from the breakdown above, there are a lot of expenses that go into a high level training camp.”
Jury touched on the importance of endorsement deals to earn some extra money for a fighter . Of course, with the recent Reebok deal, endorsements have become less common and less financial rewarding for fighters. Jury made headlines in May for sharing his displeasure with the Reebok deal in a social media post (which has since been deleted).
Jury made a reported $16,000 in his last fight, a unanimous decision loss to Donald Cerrone. He makes his Featherweight debut on December 19th at UFC on Fox 17 against Charles Oliveira.
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