By Dave Walsh

Sick of the UFC/Zuffa Empire? Frothing at the mouth over the possibility of Tim Sylvia hugging people in a different ring or Andrei Arlovski smashing people in Japan? Talk about it at our forum

When thinking about MMA right now, its impossible, absolutely impossible to not think of Zuffa’s bastard adopted child, The Ultimate Fighting Championship. Originally a labor of love, once the heat came, things went dark for a while. It took Zuffa buying the company out, with the casino mogul Fertita brothers and former aerobic kickboxing instructor and fight manager Dana White at the helm. Since then the company and the sport in general have seen tremendous growth not only in its fan base, but mainstream acceptance (well, still working on that one) and in profits as well. UFC, at this point, is right up there competing with, if not surpassing boxing and WWE when it comes to PPV revenues and for live gates. While they might not be matching the numbers for the big boxing events, that is mainly due to how boxing events are promoted compared to UFC. UFC has monthly $50 PPVs, and honestly, the fact that they sell as many PPVs as they do is just a testament to how popular the sport has gotten.

The only problem is that as the sport grows the money starts flooding in and the pay the fighters are receiving stagnates.

Sure, there is Brock Lesnar making a quarter of a million to lose in a main event, Chuck Liddell making a cool million whenever he knocks somebody out, and most fighters do have sponsors and receive non-publicly reported bonuses. But they aren’t where the problem is; the problem is the base salaries for people who aren’t Brock Lesnar, Chuck Liddell or somebody brought in from PRIDE that Dana had a hardon for. Frank Mir got what I’d have to say was a huge win over Brock Lesnar, and his base salary for winning was $80,000. While I’m sure he received a 40-50k bonus for Submission of the Night, and maybe received some sort of PPV bonus, the fact remains that he probably still didn’t receive the same amount of money that Brock Lesnar got for rushing in like a bull and getting caught in a leglock.

Then, look at the main event of this same show, where Tim Sylvia was involved in a UFC Heavyweight Title bout. Sylvia went down to a slick guillotine, but none-the-less was one of the draws for the show (god, am I really saying that?) and fought for $100,000. $100,000 for losing in a huge title fight, headlining a big revenue PPV. Tim Sylvia, the former two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion, and for better or worse one of the most easily recognizable faces in the company and sport-wide in the Heavyweight Division.

The thing about Mir and Sylvia is, if this were a few years ago and they were receiving that pay, it would be fine, but at this point UFC is not keeping up with its competitors when it comes to pay (and treatment in some cases) and it is starting to bite them in the ass. Lets look at the last EliteXC card, where Kimbo Slice hacked his way through Tank Abbott presenting his angular noggin to him for destruction purposes. Tank, for taking such a beautiful bellyflop on the EliteXC mat was compensated $126,000, while the YouTube brawler with little time training as a professional fighter and what seems to be an extremely limited skill set was given $175,000 to knock Abbott flat onto his face. The way I am seeing it, a former UFC Heavyweight Champion, Frank Mir, won’t be making the same money as the sloppy YouTube sensation Kimbo (unless these unseen bonuses are tremendous), and Tim Sylvia, the former two-time Heavyweight Champion; and while I’m not a fan, one of the best heavyweights today, was making less than an old, beaten and fat Tank Abbott to take a dive (intentional or not) for a guy who is far from an ‘elite fighter.’

But we here at Total MMA aren’t the only ones noticing this, of course, as this has been in the news for quite a while when Randy Couture decided to ‘retire’ from the UFC due to contract and pay disputes, and has since signed with Mark Cuban and is engaged in a legal battle with ZUFFA over the contract. What this comes down to is that UFC places its fighters into contracts that are sort of ridiculous and aren’t prepared to fully compensate a fighter for moving up in rank or even holding a title. Randy Couture was, easily, the biggest name fighter in the UFC. Chuck Liddell has hit his rough spot, and his hero status is much in question, but Randy is without a doubt every MMA fan, fighter and analysts hero. But Randy wasn’t making Chuck money, no matter how well-known, how many tickets or PPVs he sold or whomever he walked through. Is it simply an unfortunate situation where he signed his fight contract at the wrong time, or should his contract been able to be negotiated? Hell, why do fighters need to be under exclusive, lock-and-key contracts to one organization? If UFC was paying well-enough I’m sure nobody would be thinking about going elsewhere and you wouldn’t need such strict contracts.

This weekend we saw a confusing PPV card, where it was clear that contract disputes made the PPV card, and left talented, popular fighters on the under card. Andrei Arlovski has probably been the most publicized contract dispute on the internet in the past year or so. While Andrei hit a rough spot with a few losses, he has been on the up-and-up, but quite simply, as he wouldn’t sign a new, exclusive UFC contract for the same, if not less pay, he has had problems getting a spot on the card. That to me is rather baffling. When I think of Andrei Arlovski I think of the guy who carried the Heavyweight Championship when the Heavyweight Division could have been a colossal joke. At the time, the only competition in the division was Tim Sylvia, whom he won the title from after Mir went out with an injury. Andrei had at the time run roughshod over the tiny division, and was the dominant Heavyweight Champion during the rise of popularity for the UFC during the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality series. I remember being in the crowd for UFC 55 where Arlovski was the only fighter outside of Forrest Griffin to receive a big, positive crowd reaction. Both of them tore the roof off of the arena, and really, Forrest was due to his status as a reality TV star, and Arlovski for being a Belarusian Monster with burly chest hair, a wild beard, long hair and fangs for a mouthpiece.

While Arlovski might have two back-to-back losses to Tim Sylvia, he had, before this weekend, strung together two wins, one over Pe de Pano, and one over Fabricio Werdum, who is somehow considered a top contender for the UFC Heavyweight Title by Dana White. It took a year for Arlovski to see another UFC card, and at that it was against a fast-rising Jake O’Brien in a fight that many fans were anticipating — and it was never aired. It was a second round knockout for Arlovski, and from live reports an exciting fight, but that doesn’t matter. Are you interested in seeing the fight? Well, I’ve got good news for you (kind of) — its is available on UFC’s website and you, yes you can watch this fight… For $1.99 USD. What? Are you saying that you paid for the PPV already and that it makes no sense to have to pay for a prelim? Oh well. Maybe you missed the event and want to catch it today? Well, how about you pay Yahoo! $45 to watch a stream of the event, and then follow it up by reading Yahoo’s uninhibited thoughts and opinions on the UFC?

While I have no problem with Jon Fitch, and think its great that he got on the PPV card and is a great fighter, I’m still sort of stymied that his fight, as well as Leben/Sakara and getting to watch Evan Tanner come back from an alcohol coma to get his head pounded in is PPV material, while popular UFC fighters such as Andrei Arlovski, Diego Sanchez and Josh Koscheck are somehow not fight for PPV. Arlovski/O’Brien is a big fight for the heavyweight division, Koscheck’s fight (which was aired post-main) was extremely exciting, and Diego Sanchez is one of the most dominant fighters that has been seen in a long time in his weight class. What all of them have in common is contract disputes (or that they simply haven’t inked new contracts yet). While they floundered off of PPV, Chris Leben was rewarded for signing a new contract by getting PPV time. At this point I don’t think its a case of Leben being an exciting fighter that fans want to see and the rest not, Andrei has had a few fights where he is hesitant, but at this point its been shaken, and both Kos and Diego are always entertaining.

At this point, what is clear is that the UFC is going to treat their fighters much like the WWE treats their wrestlers; like property that they can intimidate, abuse and use to whatever extent they want. What we are seeing now is guys like Fedor Emelianenko, Randy Couture, Matt Lindland and possibly soon-to-be Tim Sylvia, Andrei Arlovski and others who are either turning down work in the UFC, turning down UFC’s mainstream success and name value (and their tiny paychecks) to look elsewhere, where the compensation is better, they can be treated like stars and hopefully get some piece of mind for not being Dana White’s personal plaything. With Zuffa and UFC’s seemingly odd business practices, such as the Xyience debacle, where it looks like they created their own biggest sponsor and are now suing internet journalists while Xyience goes bankrupt, to refusing network TV deals due to wanting to control the entire production (scarily like WWE), and instead having EliteXC scooping up the deal, refusing to work with their fighters to keep them happy and everything else under the rainbow, why are we still supporting UFC/Zuffa in droves? I never thought this day would come, but at this point I respect Frank Shamrock more than anybody else for wanting to promote his own show as opposed to being some promoter’s property. Go figure.