UFC 129 Fighter Salaries
He might not be quite as pretty now as he was when he entered the Octagon at UFC 129, but Georges St-Pierre's bank account looks much nicer today. GSP was the top earner at Saturday's monumental UFC 129, pocketing his usual $400,000 base salary. This also propels GSP to the top of our list of top MMA earners in 2011. The UFC also gave out its highest purse ever for end of the night bonuses - $129,000 - which caused some fighters to earn more in one night than they had over the course of their whole career.
Before we go any further, we should note that Ontario's Athletic Commission doesn't release fighter pay info, so none of the following salary data for the event is official. However, you can get a fairly accurate picture of a fighter's pay based on official purse info released from past fights. So, based on that info, here is the estimated pay breakdown for the 24 fighters that traded blows at the event (but please remember - this is only an estimate, not official info, especially for any fighters that made their UFC debuts at the event). These numbers obviously also don't include any PPV revenue, undisclosed bonuses and/or sponsorship money any of these fighters may have made.
Update: we reveal GSP's PPV revenue and sponsorship earnings for UFC 129 here.
Georges St-Pierre: $400,000 ($200,000 to show, $200,000 win bonus)
Lyoto Machida: $329,000 ($200,000 to show, $129,000 Knockout of the Night bonus)
Randy Couture: $250,000
Jose Aldo: $177,000 ($24,000 to show, $24,000 win bonus, $129,000 Fight of the Night bonus)
Pablo Garza: $137,000 ($4,000 to show, $4,000 win bonus, $129,000 Submission of the Night bonus)
Mark Hominick: $135,000 ($6,000 to show, $129,000 Fight of the Night bonus)
Jake Shields: $75,000
Vladimir Matyushenko: $62,000 ($31,000 to show, $31,000 win bonus)
Jason MacDonald: $52,000 ($26,000 to show, $26,000 win bonus)
Ben Henderson: $34,000 ($17,000 to show, $17,000 win bonus)
Nate Diaz: $33,000
Jake Ellenberger: $32,000 ($16,000 to show, $16,000 win bonus)
Rory MacDonald: $16,000 ($8,000 to show, $8,000 win bonus)
Mark Bocek: $15,000
Jason Brilz: $13,000
Claude Patrick: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)
John Makdessi: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)
Daniel Roberts: $12,000
Charlie Valencia: $10,000
Ryan Jensen: $10,000
Ivan Menjivar: $8,000 ($4,000 to show, $4,000 win bonus)
Kyle Watson: $8,000
Sean Pierson: $8,000
Yves Jabouin: $4,000
Thanks as always! I enjoy seeing these. A few things... No money for Machida winning? Is it because of his big show amount?
Aldo only got $48K to show AND win!?! WTF he's a stud! That seems low???
I assume the Fight/KO/Sub bonuses are based on gate receipts or something? Otherwise, why are they so huge? I guess I always just assumed they were the same amount.
Man, Hominick got lucky... if not for FotN, he wouldn't have gotten much money for the beating he took! 99% of the guys in the UFC are all criminally underpaid.
@CollegeWolf A few of the big name guys - Machida, Couture, Lesnar, etc. - don't get win bonuses - they just get the same rate regardless of the outcome of the fight.
As for Aldo, when he was in the WEC he was making $20,000/$20,000 per fight, so I bumped that up to $24,000/$24,000 since the average increase in pay for WEC guys now in the UFC is 20%. He might be getting more - we won't know for sure until he fights in a district that release pay info.
The end of night bonuses fluctuate depending on how big the event is - the free ones on TV are the lowest; the big grossing PPVs the highest.
@Jeff Fox And Aldo, wow... he should definitely be earning more. Perhaps Dana has bumped him up more than just 20%? Wish we could see those numbers.
@CollegeWolf @Jeff Hopefully next time Aldo fights is in Vegas so we can see the real numbers. Not sure if he's getting a cut of PPV money also, now that he's in the big show.
@Jeff Fox Gotcha, thanks homie.
Makes sense about the end of night bonuses too. I was just confused since these are so much bigger than the usual 75/80K bonuses.
