Regular UFC fans are well aware of the post-fight bonus system. Some more dedicated followers of MMA promotion may also have heard about the discretionary bonuses that fighters have received over the years.
But while the Fight for the Night and Performance for the Night winners, announced at the conclusion of each event for outstanding efforts, take home the announced value of $ 50,000 each, little is known about discretionary bonuses.
Speaking to The Post on Wednesday, Dana White opened up about a topic he doesn’t normally discuss: money, in particular the sums that go to his fighters’ stable. This included shedding some light on discretionary bonuses.
For most of the 41 events held in 2020, four $ 50,000 “night” bonuses were distributed. Five were awarded on two occasions, and six were given at a particularly action-packed UFC event in ESPN in July, spearheaded by middleweight Robert Whittaker and Darren Till. This results in a total of $ 8.4 million in announced bonus money.
But the UFC also told The Post that the total bonus payment for the calendar year affected by the pandemic reached $ 18 million, including previously announced bonuses. That leaves $ 9.6 million left.
White said the general practice is that for “everyone who delivered the card, I sign a check” ranging from $ 4,000 to $ 25,000 each, “depending on what I thought of their fight”.
“I’ll give you an example,” said White. “There will be a night when some crazy things will happen on the whole card, and then we have to choose what we think [were] the $ 50,000 [bonus recipients], but someone else was right in the race. They could have done it too. And it depends, I will write them from $ 10,000 to $ 25,000. “
With 456 fights played last year in the octagon – and two fighters per fight, of course – the average discretionary bonus amounts to around $ 10,526 per fighter per fight.
The announced bonus prizes have been set at $ 50,000 since the beginning of 2013, when White said the UFC wanted to standardize the amount that generally ranged from $ 40,000 to $ 75,000 in 2011 and 2012; on three occasions in 2011, the amount reached or exceeded $ 100,000.
White told MMA Junkie in 2013 that the reason for standardizing the value of the bonuses, which he described as “a gift”, was in the spirit of fairness for fighters who were not scheduled for an evening when a larger bonus amount was distributed.
“It was fair to keep them straight, so it doesn’t matter which card you fight on, it’s the same bonus,” said White at the time, adding that “no one ever complained” about the imbalance in the fight card’s fighting card values.
Unlike Performance of the Night and Fight of the Night, discretionary individual bonus allocation is not made public. The fighters themselves rarely mention the practice, although on rare occasions they offer a snapshot of how these bonuses arise. After accidentally getting dirty during a loss to Felice Herrig in 2017, Justine Kish talked about how White reached out the next day to check in, probably noticing what she called “a little humiliation behind what happened “and implying that there was a bonus coming your way.
“The other thing that is cool is that Dana hinted that I have a discretionary bonus, that is, a gift, for my performance,” Kish told The Domenick Nati Show in the days after the fight. “So the UFC is very good at giving secret bonuses – at least for me – here and there. … I didn’t ask and I didn’t ask how much it will cost or anything, so we’ll see. “
White reinforced The Post that he is generally not inclined to disclose the amounts paid to the fighters, saying that he resisted proposals from UFC officials to be more open in discussing money.
“Obviously, there is a lot of money involved and, believe me, a lot of people, including people who work for me, said, ‘If you just say publicly what you do,’ and I say, ‘but I don’t care. ‘”White said. “It is nobody’s business what these guys do.”