Michael Page was disappointed in the amount of money Zuffa
Boxing shelled out for Conor Benn. | Getty/UFC
When the
UFC broadcast deal with Paramount was announced, Michael
Page took a wait-and-see approach rather than immediately
celebrating the news.
Page’s skepticism turned out to be well founded when Zuffa Boxing,
which is owned the same parent company as the UFC, made headlines
in the combat sports world by signing Conor Benn to a one-fight
deal worth a reported $15 million. While salary figures are rarely
released these days, there are few, if any, athletes under the UFC
banner who make that much for a single fight. Even with the new
seven-year, $7.7 billion broadcast rights deal in place, thus far
it doesn’t appear that UFC purses have increased significantly.
„It’s not something that I’m happy about,“ Page told Yahoo! Sports of the Benn signing. „What I
would say is when the announcement of the Paramount, big-money
partnership [with the UFC] came, people were asking me, ‚Are you
excited about this?‘ And my answer was, ‚Well, what does that mean
for the fighters? Until we understand how that’s going to translate
to the fighters, there’s nothing to really be excited about.’“
Once the Paramount deal began, the UFC increased its post-fight
bonuses to $100,000 for “Performance of the Night” and “Fight of
the Night.” Additionally, fighters who secured finishes on a card
but didn’t receive one of those bonuses would earn an additional
$25,000 for their efforts.
“Then I heard about the, if you want to call it an increase, in
bonus structure,” he added. “This is why I wasn’t bothered to be
excited initially. Because for me, that doesn’t do enough
comparatively to the amount of money that they’ve just brought in
for themselves. … Then to see it and how quickly [Dana White]
values people — or how highly he values people away from the sport
that kind of built his reputation — it’s just upsetting, to be
fair. It’s disappointing more than anything.”
We Deserve More
The 29-year-old Benn, Page says, is “nowhere near the best in his
field,” which is why the $15 million salary is so disappointing for
the 38-year-old UFC and Bellator veteran.
„I’ve been saying this for a long time, I feel like we have
deserved more,” Page said. “I hate hearing stories of fighters
getting to what is the pinnacle of your career, in terms of the
UFC, and still being broke. That just shouldn’t exist. Unless
you’re just completely terrible with money, it just shouldn’t exist
that you’re struggling from fight to fight, and it just shouldn’t
be a thing. … The only thing I can say is it’s disappointing more
than anything.”
Page is 3-1 in the UFC and is coming off back-to-back victories
over Jared
Cannonier and Sharabutdin
Magomedov. He recently
expressed frustration with the lack of available fights for
someone in his position. When “Venom” was finallly booked, it
proved to be a curious matchup against Sam
Patterson at
UFC London on March 21.
”For me, it’s a slightly weird one,“ Page said, „but I’m going to
go and do what I do best — put on an amazing show, and hopefully
progress to a bigger name after that.“