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The USADA/Fighter Pay Thread (That Deontay Wilder Money Edition)


Elsalvajeloco

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Ariel Helwani said he spoke to Conor McGregor after his latest fake retirement tweet and said Conor tweeted that because he's frustrated because he can't fight right now. Basically, McGregor wants a fight and UFC won't book him one.

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2 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

To steal a line from a semi-famous person from Louisville, "Wouldn't you know who won the pony!"

So on the latest edition of WOR (the NXT IYH recap), ole Dave Meltzer confirmed two things I mentioned last night:

1. The UFC gets $16.67 million per PPV no matter what the show does.

2. The fighters don't get any type of compensation from ESPN. Any money the fighters would get comes from the UFC. So the whole "but PPV points though" doesn't really apply now. ESPN is the only distributor if you're counting only domestic buys which makes up the vast majority of the PPV buys. 

That's interesting.16.67 million no matter what.

I wonder how long Dana thinks he has until some state will let him sell out an arena. 

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Meltzer also mentioned how it sounds like more and more than Dana is going to quit or at the very least Dana is just being more of a crybaby than usual.

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While it may hurt branding and name recognition, it would probably be for the best if they didn't have giant man baby running the promotion. They'd probably replace him with a robotic evil prick, so I doubt it's much of an improvement but I'm certainly ready for a post-Dana UFC.

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Based on the small video I've seen from the 250 post fight presser (maybe I'm missing something), I don't think he's ready to quit as much as he clearly thought these last two months would go better for him. I think he sees himself as being unfairly maligned when he was the "first" one back when it came to legitimate sporting events. Ok, you get a gold smiley face sticker for that. However, the first problem is when you decide to do that you become even further under the microscope. You said you wanted to make this the biggest sport in world. Right now, thanks to a pandemic, it kinda is. UFC 250 dominated the Google trends on Saturday. Besides the first closed doors show in Brazil, all the shows in this brief respite from other major sports have overachieved. He probably does deserve props for that. Yet, it's not him out there fighting. He isn't the reason why these fights are getting over. He's just the hype man. That job becomes less effective when you cannot even do press conferences or don't know really if these fights are gonna come off. Moreover, this is the wrong time for him to be getting into public spats with people. On top of that, you cannot act like you don't care when you clearly do. This is like some seventh grade shit where he is complaining to Kevin Iole (or Brett Okamoto or John Morgan) about not knowing what to do and then saying he doesn't give a fuck. Which one is it? Then, prior to all this shit, he started engaging in this back-and-forth nonsense with John Oliver. Dude, just take a break. You don't have to show up for the shows especially if you refuse to wear a mask. I mean, hell, you usually miss most Fight Nights (prior to COVID-19) that weren't important anyway for the last six or seven years at least. Take a break and use some of that time to repair the fractured relationships with the fighters. Or is that too much to ask of Mr. I Ain't Scared Like The Rest of These Sports Commissioners? I dunno.

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On 6/7/2020 at 7:25 PM, Craig H said:

Conor is going to be like the Terry Funk of MMA with all of his retirements at this rate.

 

On 6/7/2020 at 7:56 PM, Oyaji said:

Any time he's not the centre of attention and doesn't have a fight lined up.

The boy who cried wolf. Fuck off, Conor.

Edited by The Natural
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Notice how this bullshit didn't work on Domonique Foxworth, who actually ran a prominent sports union and was the COO for another. (FWIW I put a timestamp on the pertinent part.)

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Hahahahahaha. The MMA media is so complicit with this bullshit because they want access to Dana. Okamoto seems like a good dude and all but he is a company guy not wanting to rock the boat. 

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2 hours ago, Oyaji said:

Hahahahahaha. The MMA media is so complicit with this bullshit because they want access to Dana. Okamoto seems like a good dude and all but he is a company guy not wanting to rock the boat. 

I'm always appalled by UFC press conferences and the questions asked. It's like listening to a celebrity meet and great at a Comic Con.

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MMA has always had a weird structure and maybe's that due to budgetary reasons, but a vast majority of known MMA media doesn't even go to the shows. John Morgan is always there. Okamoto is always there. Helwani will probably be there. Marc Raimondi will be there. A few other notable people might be there*. Everybody else is from some website no one has heard of. What's the point of MMA media if the people who might ask the insightful questions are at home watching the show? That one has always kinda bugged me.

*If there is a Bellator show the same day, some sites will choose to send one person to one show and another one to the other. However, there have been times where whichever one is the bigger card gets the designated site representative.

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 minute ago, The Natural said:

Thanks, @Elsalvajeloco. Good riddance, Reebok.

I think the actual fight gear was pretty decent once you got past the initial rollout in 2015 and then the less blander-but-still bland ones from around late 2016. I don't expect the Venum ones to be that much better than what the guys wear now. It's always going to look weird without the sponsor patches. So I'm fine with the newer Reebok stuff they have the fighters wear.

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6 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I think the actual fight gear was pretty decent once you got past the initial rollout in 2015 and then the less blander-but-still bland ones from around late 2016. I don't expect the Venum ones to be that much better than what the guys wear now. It's always going to look weird without the sponsor patches. So I'm fine with the newer Reebok stuff they have the fighters wear.

Oh man, that 2015 debut launch was so fucking bad:

b0bf2ddbc5f5c25cb0b90615fe270f9b1.jpg

Anderson_Aldo.jpg?ts=1448992377

Reebok gear looked shit and was way overpriced.

I miss when fighters had distinctive MMA gear: Rich Franklin's brown and pink shorts, Chuck Liddell's Iceman shorts and Anderson Silva's black with yellow. 

Edited by The Natural
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FWIW Reebok will still provide the footwear until the end of 2021. So I'm guessing they will sign a separate shoe deal once that part ends. That's going to be interesting because apparently both Under Armour and Nike were in the race for the deal Venum got. For Under Armour, I don't see how they have the capital to do anything with the UFC. It's not looking good for them right now. As for Nike, being the official shoe of the UFC (even though fighters don't wear shoes in competition) would make sense for them just as a way to test the waters in the MMA market without committing too much money.

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How in the hell does Venum have that much money?

And Under Armor feels like it's being kept afloat by Notre Dame and once they pull out and switch back to Adidas, that's probably it (ND should have never switched from Adidas to begin with).

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6 minutes ago, Craig H said:

How in the hell does Venum have that much money?

And Under Armor feels like it's being kept afloat by Notre Dame and once they pull out and switch back to Adidas, that's probably it (ND should have never switched from Adidas to begin with).

Some French venture capital? I dunno. However, by sponsoring Vasyl Lomachenko and other known boxers/kickboxers, they've at least kept themselves visible in the era of the UFC (and PFL FWIW) sponsor ban. I don't know why anyone is hoping for or relying on Bellator's visibility on DAZN to help them make money in this climate selling apparel. 

I wonder how Jose Aldo feels because he was pissed about not being able to wear Venum anymore due to the Reebok deal and said he could lose his deal. This was October 2015 I believe. Now, it appears he isn't with them anymore (the only two names who appear on the Venum MMA team are Angela Lee and Lena Ovchynnikova). This has got to be bittersweet. You finally get to wear the company you were kinda the face of at one point, and now you don't have your own separate deal with them.

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The UFC press release indicated this deal would pay fighters more than the Reebok uniform deal, which was for $70 million a year, according to ESPN. But that was not $70 million in pure cash. Some of that value included the Reebok products. 

Granted the Reebok deal was first announced in 2014, but it still seems weird that Venum would be able to afford to pay fighters more than Reebok.

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The question is whether or not they will do away with the tiers because some of these people fight so frequently. At the very least, it seems like you have more people fighting at least 2 or 3 times a year. That shit starts to add up over time.

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50 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

The question is whether or not they will do away with the tiers because some of these people fight so frequently. At the very least, it seems like you have more people fighting at least 2 or 3 times a year. That shit starts to add up over time.

The press release indicates that the setup is staying the same outside of they are promising that the fighters will get a pay increase when the Venum deal is in place:

Quote

UFC’s outfitting policy is administered through its Promotional Guidelines Compliance program. UFC will adjust the pay scale tied to its Promotional Guidelines Compliance program, which will result in across the board increases for all athletes effective April 2021.

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 months later...
Quote

USADA announced the suspension after an independent arbitrator’s ruling that followed an evidentiary hearing on Nov. 10. The 37-year-old tested positive for drostanolone, stanozolol metabolites, and metabolites of dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (DHCMT) during a pair of out-of-competition tests in September 2019. The drugs are classified as non-specified substances in the class of anabolic agents and are prohibited at all times.

In addition, USADA stated they discovered Lewis-Parry had “presented falsified evidence, specifically an adulterated supplement” to the agency and the arbitrator; Lewis-Perry claimed the positive test stemmed from a tainted supplement.

1. Holy shit.

2. I didn't know Chi was even signed with UFC. That went super under the radar.

3. The "Beef with Jon Jones and not even be set to fight him" curse continues (Rockhold, Weidman, Reyes, Lewis-Parry)

4. Ironically, I was talking to sprewellrimz earlier tonight about Royce Gracie's epic drug test failure in 2007. This has to be up there with that.

5. Chi Lewis-Parry went from potential UFC superstar to absolute nobody in pretty dramatic fashion.

 

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