Trending: UFC 160
Ahead of last night’s The Ultimate Fighter: Nelson vs. Carwin debut, UFC President Dana White visited Fox LA during the regular media tour and spoke out a variety of topics, including his relationship with one of this season’s featured coaches, Roy Nelson. It’s no secret that White and Nelson don’t see eye-to-eye on, well, anything; White is not shy about letting people know. Dana also talks about fighter pay, and the difference between reported numbers and actual numbers some of the combatants receive.
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Let me preface this with the statement that I have NO idea about any of this, hence my question, but could it be that Dana doesn’t want to disclose the fighters’ pay for their own (the UFC’s) tax purposes? Or, as a company, public or not, do they have to disclose all their payouts to the IRS? Meaning, GSP is said to get $400,000 for a fight, but at the end of the nght, he takes home $10m… is that something the IRS would be notified of in order to check and balance against GSP’s tax return, or do they not need to know?
I’ve always wondered that. For some reason, Dana not wanting the vultures to descend on his fighters doesn’t seem like a genuine reason to me.
Just curious in case anyone knows.
To the best of my non-accounting knowledge:
Having worked as an “Independent Contractor” before, all monies paid to a fighter by Zuffa are reported to the IRS and the fighter will file a 1099XX tax form (letters may vary). This is not public information as Zuffa/UFC are not publicly traded companies and are therefore immune to public disclosure laws.
The reason we hear about the per-fight salaries of the fighters is due to disclosure laws as regulated by each state/province/country individually. In other words, the only reason we know that GSP got paid $400k for said hypothetical fight is because the State of California/Nevada/Whatever requires that type of disclosure as it is part of the fight contract. Behind the scene bonuses that are company “policy” (unofficial) are not part of official pay and are therefore not subject to state disclosure law, but would be reported to the IRS as part of the 1099XX tax forms.
Ahhh, ok. That makes sense. Thanks for the info.
VERY INTERESTING INTERVIEW.
Some thoughts
First of all, it is their business and they can do whatever the heck they want, and good fort them for making fat profits (and for bringing this amazing sport as far along as they have).
But I have to say, sounds like a pretty convenient excuse that, oh we just don’t publish the pay to protect the fighters from scavengers lol. I’m sorry, but the Ufc cares about themselves, and themselves first, all the way, and publishing fat pay days would be the best PR they could ever have. That surely is not the reason they don’t disclose that info.
I’m sure they pay the champs and the big draws, like Sonnen, Forrest, etc pretty well, but lets not pretend they are paying the fighters a fraction of what most other famous athletes and fighters are making, or of what their income is, more importantly. Hell I would uneducatedly guess that they could pay the total purse and all other expenses for each event from the gate itself. Which is the only way they could make the free events profitable at all (of close they do get paid on the TV deals as well). But anyway, like I said, its their company and good for them.
Haha big country may be the ultimate underachiever out of the octagon, but her surely is three ultimate overachiever in the octagon.
No matter what Dana says about boxing, he cannot deny its viability when its top fighters are consistently making 8 figures.
Sure only a few boxers make this much, but NONE of ufcs fighters make anywhere near that. Not even in an aggregate amount stretched over several events worth of ppvs. Just saying.
That’s pure BS! You can NEVER convince me that not even ONE of these UFC fighters in their entire history would tell what they really make. With the amount of snitches and people trying to make money that we see on the internet every day, there would have been someone telling the real deal by now if it was in fact more money out there. If it IS true, the ufc has told them not to tell and made them sign contract or threatened them with firing. Dana can lie all he wants to.