There’s no doubt there are a lot of overpaid athletes in the world, but nobody will ever accuse UFC fighters as being among them. In fact, for what they go through to earn as a living, they can be considered to be some of the lowest-paid of all. That’s why none of them have ever made it to the annual Forbes magazine list of the top-100 paid athletes. That list is usually topped by boxers, as it was in 2012 with American Floyd Mayweather Jr. coming in at number one with total earnings of $85 million followed by Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines who raked in $62 million. They each fought twice between June 2011 and 2012, the time period the list represents.
There were athletes from 11 different sports on the top-earners list including boxing, baseball, basketball, cricket, football, golf, soccer, and tennis, but members of the UFC were noticeably absent. The last-placed person on the list earned approximately $16 million.
As far as boxing and the UFC are concerned, there’s an ongoing debate about which sport is tougher to master. However, in reality they’re both grueling combat sports that consist of endless training and punishing bouts. When it comes to earnings though, boxing and the UFC are simply worlds apart. Legendary boxers such as Muhammad Ali and George Foreman were sharing $10 million purses as far back as 1974, while according to estimated records, no UFC fighter has made that amount in their entire career.
Athletic commissions started releasing UFC purses publicly back in 2004 with the UFC 46 event. These figures include a fighter’s salary, plus bonuses made for their bouts. They don’t include sponsorship money or any unreported bonuses though, such as a percentage of pay-per-view earnings. Still, without any possible added income public records show that the now-retired Chuck Liddell is the highest-grossing UFC athlete of all time with career earnings of $4,320,000,. This is about $30 million less than Mayweather makes for one boxing match.
You can read more of this in our March/April 2013 issue of ModelsMania. Subscribe now so you don’t miss a single issue!


Facebook ModelsMania
Twitter ModelsMania
MySpace ModelsMania