@freeyourmind. I do not think Dana White is only like an employee now. He still has an interest of 9% of profits made by the company. He also still runs the show and has the power to make the decisions on matchmaking and other deals.
Yeah you're right. I know he sold his 9% share, but didn't know he still received 9% of future profits without that share in the company. I stand corrected.
Although he definitely has different objectives, so it's not him totally running the show. The UFC is run very differently before and after the sale. It's about max viewership now, so fighters that are skilled and not the most popular, don't really get many opportunities. We can see the behaviour of fighters changing, and artificially talking shit and being their own version of Conor to try and get some attention and viewership.
Im pretty sure White is very well off and retired for life, he will keep getting dividends from the company. I only see the UFC going higher and eventually will be able to get massive paydays for the fighters boxing style.
It depends on how good the fights are, it all comes down to that. If they give us the fights we want it will be a success.
He was supposed to get 360 million for selling his share to WME, and he was likely quite well off even before the sale. Without having a well run fighters union OR legit competition in MMA, they pay isn't going to be like boxing. Bellator would need to grow some more and directly compete with the UFC as a premiere organization, and then maybe they'll need to bid the price up on fighters. Right now, unless you're one of the top handful of fighters/champions, you're probably not breaking 200k per fight.
Boxing has a very long legendary history as a sport. Give UFC some time. In a couple of decades it will be a more established sport with big paydays. It looks like all the kids are getting into MMA, so I would say MMA interest is growing more than boxing and at the end of the day all of these kids are the future UFC ticket buyers. In a couple of generations MMA will be consistently making more numbers than boxing, even tho I like boxing more but that's how it is.
That is of course unless boxing can create new big personalities with great talent that draw millions of people to tune in like Ali, Tyson, Floyd etc.
The Josua-Kltischko fight was exciting, I didn't felt that in a long time in the HW division so I hope I can see more of that.
Yeah MMA is getting a lot more popular, and it's been pretty mainstream for a few years now, with very frequent events (which dilutes the cards). But the UFC is a single promotion, with Bellator as a growing #2. It doesn't give many options for fighters to get paid well, regardless of whether or not UFC is making good gate/ppv revenue. It doesn't affect the fighter's pay unless they are in a title fight or super popular. I don't doubt that the UFC will make better numbers than boxing (they already do unless it's a huge boxing event I believe)...I just don't think it will translate into fighter pay until there is proper competition, and the UFC needs to start paying more or lose their fighters to other promotions.
And agreed, the Joshua Klitschko fight was very entertaining. I like seeing GGG as well, but have shifted my interest in boxing to MMA around 15 years ago.
