When the Fertittas and Dana White sold the UFC to WME-IMG for over four billion dollars earlier this year, one of the first things they started to do was cut back on staff. Gone were the heads of their international outposts, along with a bunch of office staff. And eventually, they even axed two men that Dana White said would have “jobs for life” under him – retired superstars Chuck Liddell and Matt Hughes.
Both were given jobs by White after they retired, mostly just as ambassadors for the company. White stated after they were released that since it wasn’t his company anymore, he didn’t have the power to keep them around.
One person that got lost in the mix was Forrest Griffin, who had the same sort of deal that Hughes and Liddell did.
So who better to give an explanation of exactly what happened with all three men than the West Linn Gangster himself, Chael Sonnen?
On a recent episode of his podcast, Sonnen drops a bunch of info about how much each man made, and why Liddell and Hughes got cut while Griffin apparently stayed (transcribed by Low Kick):
“In fairness, if I’m buying a company I’m gonna look and see where the waste is. If I’m letting Marshall Zelaznik go, I’m letting these two knuckleheads who are on $30K a month, but don’t even live in the state go. Do you know why [Forrest Griffin] kept his job?”
“He was the only one of the three who took his job seriously. What was supposed to happen, from a UFC standpoint, they looked after some of their boys who looked after them. The UFC was getting some bad PR for not looking after their fighters, and they also wanted to give the guys who did carry lifting early on some jobs that last forever. Chuck got the first one, and it’s $30K a month, and he doesn’t have to do anything. This is before the police ran him out of San Luis Obispo, so he wasn’t even in the state. Matt Hughes still isn’t in the state, he lives on the farm in Illinois. These are literally fake jobs.”
“They give a job to Forrest, and he takes one look at it and decides to take the job seriously. He shows up at 9:00 am on Monday morning and they don’t even have an office for him because it wasn’t a real job. He just kept coming in, and then he started sitting in on meetings. If anyone was gonna keep the job it’s Forrest because he has contributed.”
Remember, this is Chael Sonnen we’re talking about, so take these statements with three or four grains of salt. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting statement.