Regular UFC fans are well acquainted with the post-fight bond system. Some more dedicated fans of the more important MMA promotion might also have heard of discretionary bonds that fighters have received over the years.
But while the recipients of the night’s fight and nightly performance, announced at the end of each event to make outstanding efforts, take $ 50,000 each, little is known about the discretionary bonuses.
Speaking to The Post on Wednesday, Dana White spoke on a topic she doesn’t normally discuss: money, particularly the sums earmarked for her combatant stable. This included some light on discretionary bonuses.
For most of the 41 events held in 2020, four $ 50,000 “nightly” vouchers were handed out. Five were awarded twice, and six were handed out at a particularly action-packed UFC event on ESPN in July, led by middleweight Robert Whittaker and Darren Till. That adds up to a total of $ 8.4 million in announced bonus money.
But the UFC also told The Post that the full payment of the bonus for the calendar year affected by the pandemic reached $ 18 million, including the previously announced bonds. That leaves $ 9.6 million left over.
White said the general practice is that for “everyone who handed over the card, I write a check” ranging from $ 4,000 to $ 25,000 each, “depending on what you think of your fight.”
“I’ll give you an example,” White said. “There will be a night when there will be madness throughout the menu, and then we will have to choose what we thought [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 dollars ”.
With 456 fights played last year in the octagon and of course two fighters per fight, the average discretionary bond reaches about $ 10,526 per fighter, per fight.
Announced bonus awards have been set at $ 50,000 since early 2013, when White said the UFC wanted to standardize the figure, which had 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 bonuses, which he described as “a gift,” had a spirit of fairness for fighters who were not scheduled on a night when a largest bonus amount.
“It was fair to keep them straight all the way, so no matter what card you can get, it’s the same bonus,” White said at the time, adding that “no one ever complained” about the imbalance in amounts. of the fight letter.
Unlike Performance of the Night and Fight of the Night, the assignment of individual discretionary bonus is not made public. The wrestlers themselves rarely present the practice, although they rarely offer a snapshot of how these bonds are produced. After being accidentally soiled during the loss of Felice Herrig in 2017, Justine Kish talked about how White contacted her the next day to register, she probably realized what he referred to as “a bit of a humiliation behind what happened ”and reported that there was an addition. bonus that comes to you.
“The other nice thing is that Dana hinted that I have a discretionary bonus, which is a gift for my performance,” Kish said on The Domenick Nati Show in the days after the fight. “So UFC is very good at giving little secret bonuses, at least to me, here and there. … I didn’t ask and I didn’t care how much it would be or anything, so we’ll see.”
White confirmed to The Post that he generally does not feel inclined to advertise the amounts paid to fighters, saying he has resisted the openings of UFC employees to get them closer to discussing the money.
“Viouslybviamente, there’s a lot of money involved and, believe me, a lot of people, including people who work for me, said,‘ If we only said publicly what you do, ’and I say,‘ but I don’t care. ‘White said. “It’s no one’s thing for these guys to do.”