Outside Source
During a press conference to promote her upcoming bout with Gina Carano, Rousey said that the initial plan was to book the bout as part of the UFC’s last pay-per-view event under the ESPN broadcast deal this past December. However, that timeline didn’t work for Carano, and when the UFC moved away from a pay-per-view model as a result of its new media rights deal with Paramount, the fight moved to a new platform. Now, Most Valuable Promotions will stage Rousey vs. Carano, and the bout will mark the first MMA event on Netflix on May 16.
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“I knew that we could promote this on our own and probably be the most lucrative way to go about it for us, but I have such love and respect for Dana that I wanted to bring this to him first,” Rousey said at the presser. “I said, ‘I know I can do this on my own, but I would rather fight for you than to fight for me, just make it make sense for me.’ And originally we were going to do it New Year’s and it was going to be the last fight under the pay-per-view model and he offered me the best pay-per-view structure ever and I was so grateful, but then Gina said she needed more time to get in the best shape possible and that she wanted me to fight the best version of herself and I think that was fate. It was meant to be. It was meant to push us onto the other side and once they moved into the streaming model, it’s just not about putting on the best fights possible anymore.”
Rousey echoes complaints lodged by many in the MMA community recently: That the UFC has less incentive to put on the best fights possible thanks to guaranteed money from Paramount. The Olympic judoka also claimed that UFC athletes today are struggling more financially than they did in the past. While the UFC recently raised post-fight bonuses from $50,000 to $100,000, there hasn’t been any indication that fight purses have increased. Fighter pay came under even more scrutiny when Zuffa Boxing, which is owned by the same parent company as the UFC, paid Conor Benn $15 million for a one-fight deal.
‘They’re Thinking About Shareholders’
“It used to be that UFC was the best place that you could come in combat sports to make a living and be paid fairly and now it’s one of the worst places to go,” Rousey said.. “It’s why so many of their top athletes are leaving to go and find pay elsewhere. It’s why their champions like Valentina [Shevcheko] are selling pictures of their titties on OnlyFans. These people, a lot of them at the ground level, they can’t support their families. They’re living poverty-level fighting full-time. This company just got $7.7 billion dollars. There’s no reason that they can’t afford to pay their athletes at least a living wage and not even that, to at least be able to match what these athletes are making in other sports.
“Why would they expect to get the best athletes and the best inspiring kids that want to be something into MMA? Why not go into football? Why not go into boxing? Why not go into anything else? So they’re bleeding talent because of their short-term greed. They’re thinking about the next quarter. They’re thinking about the shareholders. They’re not thinking about their responsibility to be stewards of the future of the sport.”
Rousey made it clear that her criticism of the UFC is based more on what she preceives as the philosophy of the TKO Group Holdings ownership group than anything to do with White.
“Most of my criticism of the UFC now is because Dana isn’t the owner and he isn’t calling the shots, and he isn’t running things the way he wants because he’s an employee of the company now. He’s not the owner,” Rousey said. I think it was a big mistake of theirs to not let him run the company the way he always has.”
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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