Author: Anton Tabuena

Bellator and Eagle FC co-promotion?

Junior dos Santos vs Fedor Emelianenko? There’ll be a few hurdles to get that done, but there seems to be at least some interest from multiple parties involved.

Ahead of Eagle FC 47, UFC champ turned promoter Khabib Nurmagomedov expressed his desire to work with Bellator and book that UFC champ vs PRIDE champ match up.

“If Dos Santos wins, I really want to make Dos Santos vs Fedor fight,” Nurmagomedov said at his pre-fight press conference. “He has to stay focused, but I want to talk to my friend Scott Coker because Fedor is under Bellator contract. I don’t know what they’re going to do next with him but definitely we can talk and we can create some good stories.

“Why not? Because these two guys was long time the face of MMA. Fedor is the greatest fighter of all time, in my opinion, and Dos Santos was champion for a couple of years in UFC,” he said. “These two guys they deserve and the fans deserve and for me it’s a very interesting matchup, too.”

Dos Santos, who would likely have to get past fellow UFC vet Yorgan De Castro this weekend first, also says he likes this potential match up with Fedor.

“I’m a big, big, big fan of Fedor and I really believe, like Khabib said, he’s the greatest. That was a magical time in the MMA world. And when he was fighting, he did those amazing fights with ‘Big Nog.’ I wasn’t even fighting at that time but I was a big fan of them. So for me, because I trained with ‘Big Nog’ as well, it was always a dream.

“The biggest thing that I would like to achieve in my MMA career is to fight Fedor. So to hear that maybe possible now, it’s just amazing.”

Bellator President Scott Coker has since revealed that he had a phone call with Khabib after this press conference.

That “King of Collaboration” tag fits, as Coker has long been known for successfully co-promoting with various organizations even from his time in Strikeforce. This was also the case with one of Fedor’s more recent bouts, where Bellator worked with Rizin in 2019 to bring back the former PRIDE legend for a fight in Japan.

Emelianenko, who is now 45-years-old, has won four of his last five Bellator bouts. He knocked out both Timothy Johnson and Rampage Jackson in his last two bouts.

Dos Santos on the other hand, is 38, and will be competing this Friday for the first time since leaving the UFC in 2020. He is coming off four rough losses to champions and top contenders in Francis Ngannou, Ciryl Gane, Curtis Blaydes and Jairzinho Rozenstruik.

Another Holyfield badly lost at a Triller event.

Evan Holyfield, son of the legendary Evander Holyfield, came into his bout this Saturday’s TrillerVerse 5 as a -10,000 betting favorite. The 24-year-old Holyfield was 9-0 and matched up against a 6-5 journeyman, but their records and the insanely wide betting odds didn’t matter.

In the second round of their contest, journeyman Jurmain McDonald scored a sensational upset, landing a big right hand that put Holyfield out. The referee initially started counting, but waved the fight off as it was clear that Holyfield wasn’t going to beat the count and continue fighting.

It seemed like a pretty fair stoppage despite Holyfield’s protests after.

Watch the upset knockout below:

The loss also means now both father and son have suffered bad losses at Triller in the past eight months.

Last September, Evander Holyfield returned to competition at 58-years-old, and was put into a horrible match up against the much younger and far more active fighter in Vitor Belfort. Holyfield predictably lost by first round TKO, in a bout that athletic commissions wouldn’t sanction and clearly shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

TrillerVerz 5’s headliner saw Sergey Kovalev defeat Tervel Pulev by decision in his cruiserweight debut.

Endeavor bosses tried to justify the UFC’s controversial pay structure again.

During Endeavor’s Q1 2022 investor earnings call, the company discussed how their Owned Sports and Properties segment — which is primarily driven by the UFC — continued its financial success. According to CFO Jason Lubin, the segment generated $296.7 million in revenue and had an adjusted EBITDA of $148.7 million, which is up from Q1 of the year prior by $13.2 million and $3.2 million, respectively.

They cited “greater sponsorship licensing” for the UFC, along with new international media deal rights in the Netherlands, Spain and South Korea.

Apart from talking about their financial gains, CFO Jason Lublin also again defended the controversial issue of low UFC fighter pay. He claimed that UFC shouldn’t be likened to other major league sports — a comparison UFC bosses themselves routinely made — and said they should instead be compared to individual sports.

“We think the right comparison is to other individual sports such as PGA Tour, F1, NASCAR and ATP,” the Endeavor CFO argued. “And if you look at those athletes and what they’re paid, as a relative percentage of revenue for those leagues, it’s right in line where the UFC is with their athlete compensation. I would also point out that the fighter comp CAGR (compound annual growth rate) since 2005 has been 26%, while the revenue CAGR for that period has been 21%.”

The year chosen, 2005, happens to be the year that fighter pay as a share of revenue was the lowest in Zuffa’s history, being around 9%. We know this thanks to disclosures in the Le v Zuffa antirust lawsuit. We also know, thanks to this case, that the UFC had $48.3 million in revenue in 2005 and paid the fighters $4.43 million total that year. If Lubin had used 2004 or 2006 as his starting year then the CAGR for both fighter pay and revenues would have been nearly identical.

If we apply the CAGR that Lubin provided, we see that revenues would be around $1.020 billion today, while fighter pay would be around $178.8 million, or approximately 17.5% of the revenue. UFC’s own presentations in 2016 had them projecting to have fighter pay remain at 17% for years going forward.

(Of course, the 21% CAGR for revenue could have been rounded up from 20.5% or down from 21.4%. The same with the 26% CAGR for fighter pay. In which case, for 2021 revenue would be from $954.42 million to $1.075 billion and fighter pay would be from $164.36 million to $184.27 million.)

When choosing to compare that revenue share from 17 years ago, it’s also worth noting how that percentage is being split between far more fighters today as their current roster of over 600 athletes is around 400% more than 2005. Using our $178 million figure for 2021, individual fighter pay has risen from a fighter-bout average of approximately $27,000 to $174,000. A CAGR of only 12%.

With regards to their comparisons with other sports, you’ll notice that one glaringly obvious sport is absent. Boxing, which is also based on the business of selling tickets, broadcast rights, and/or pay-per-views in order to watch two people fight each other, would seem like the most obvious comparison.

Its absence might be because where the UFC is thought to pay less than 20% of their revenue to the fighters, boxing pays much, much more. For example, Canelo Alvarez this year might earn close to what the entire UFC roster of over 600 fighters did last year.

As part of the Le v Zuffa lawsuit, Top Rank’s CFO, David Lopez, declared under penalty of perjury, that the promotion’s paid the following share of revenue to boxers for each of these select years:

2013 67%

2014 68%

2015 69%

2016 80%

Meanwhile, financials submitted in Golden Boy’s lawsuit versus Al Haymon showed Oscar De La Hoya’s company paying the following amounts:

2014 64%

2015 62%

1st 6 months of 2016 56%

As for the sports he did offer, neither the PGA Tour nor the Association of Tennis Professions seem like much better comparisons. While the ATP is currently thought to pay only 17.5% of their revenue to their players, this is expected to change as the ATP has made a commitment to split 50-50 all new revenues with the players.

In addition, the ATP is not a for profit company. It’s an association made up both players and representatives of the many tournaments that make up the ATP Tour. Most of these tournaments are themselves non profits. For example the US Open is run by the United States Tennis Association. The USTA is a non-profit that uses the revenues generated by the US Open and other major events to fund operations that include promoting and growing the sport, including hosting grass roots to professional events.

Meanwhile, the PGA Tour says it will distribute $838 million to the players from projected 2022 revenues of $1.522 billion. This would be 55% for the players.

This does not include the four major championships, like the Masters or US Open, which are not run by the PGA Tour and pay much less of their revenues as a percentage to the players, perhaps as low as 10%. But those four events generate just around 40% of the revenue the other Tour events do, so even with the lower revenue share for those events players can expect to receive around 45% of the revenue from all the events.

There is also one other major difference between golf and tennis as opposed to MMA: players do not have to sign an exclusive deal in order to compete at a major event. Wimbledon does not demand players sign exclusive long term deals in order to appear and compete on their courts. If a player is feuding with the officials for that event they are free to play at on of the many other tournaments held every year.

This scenario was actually noted during hearings to implement the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, with the comparison being to made practices then in boxing:

“Despite the fact that top-rated challengers have clearly earned the right to compete for a title, sanctioning organizations have abetted restrictive contracting practices by allowing promoters of championship bouts to require options from them. As one hearing witness noted, this is akin to forcing a professional tennis player or golfer to sign an exclusive, long term contract with the promoter of whatever event they were seeking to win. The athlete would then only be able to compete when the promoter approved, against only those opponents who also were forced to agree to terms with that promoter. In self-governed and well organized sports industries such as tennis and golf, such a business practice would be strongly challenged as an unreasonable restraint of trade. In professional boxing, it is business as usual.”

Not only are these protections not in place for mixed martial artists, these fighters also haven’t been getting a comparable wage share across a lot of sports and various leagues the UFC likes to compare themselves to.

Figures from years past already showed these immensely low revenue share UFC fighters get. In this attempt to defend themselves, Endeavor may have just given even further confirmation that the same split and issue is very much prevalent today.

More interim belts.

UFC wants another interim title just four months after the belt changed hands.

Despite Deiveson Figueiredo just winning back his title in January, the UFC is reportedly already moving on and booking another interim title. The flyweight champion currently has an injured finger and plans to return later in the year, but the UFC’s ESPN PPV schedule might just take priority again as they seemingly want to have the belt on the line regardless of the circumstance.

With Figueiredo unavailable for now, Ariel Helwani reports that the UFC is “working on finalizing” a Brandon Moreno and Kai Kara-France rematch for the interim flyweight title at UFC 277 on July 30th. MMA Junkie also reports that the interim title bout has been verbally agreed upon.

The pair first fought back in 2019 where Moreno won a decision over Kara-France.

The now former flyweight champion in Moreno is coming off a unanimous decision loss to Figueiredo at UFC 270 in January. Kara-France, on the other hand, has earned this shot at a belt after three straight wins over the likes of Askar Askarov and Cody Garbrandt.

According to Helwani, also in the works for UFC 277 is Julianna Peña vs Amanda Nunes 2, although it’s not yet been finalized as of this writing.

Watch highlights from the UFC 274 main card bout.

As part of the UFC 274 PPV card, long term MMA veterans Tony Ferguson and Michael Chandler faced off in a battle between two renowned action fighters. Ferguson came into the contest after suffering three straight rough losses. It became four after this bout, and the finish was even more brutal than before.

Seconds into the second round, Chandler landed a perfectly placed front kick that put Ferguson out cold. He faceplanted and was motionless for an extended period, in what was a pretty concerning scene.

Watch highlights of the contest below, along with a snippet from the play-by-play of the contest.

Michael Chandler vs. Tony Ferguson – Round 1

They meet in the middle. Chandler bouncing in and out of range. Ferguson checking low kicks. Ferguson catches Chandler and puts him down! He’s following up and hurts Chandler again. Crowd roaring TONY! TONY! Ferguson lands a right, eats a left hand. Chandler swings and misses badly. Chandler staggered again. Starting to fight wild and getting caught by Ferguson. Chandler shoots for a beautiful double leg that puts Ferguson on his back. Ferguson throwing kicks and elbows from the bottom. Goes for an arm bar. Chandler cut. Ferguson kicks him away. Chandler dives back into Ferguson’s guard. Chandler scores from the top. Ref warns Ferguson for grabbing the fence. Does it again. Warned again. Ferguson looking for a kimura. Nope. Ferguson cut. More punches from Chandler. Ground and pound adding up as the round ends.

Michael Chandler vs. Tony Ferguson – Round 2

Chandler lands an incredible soccer kick to the chin and Tony Ferguson is out cold!

Result: Michael Chandler def. Tony Ferguson via KO (kick) at 0:17 of Round 2.

Here’s the latest UFC roster purge.

Sixteen fighters are no longer with the UFC.

The news come from the tracker UFC Roster Watch, which signaled that over a dozen fighters have been removed from the UFC roster, signaling that they’re no longer with the promoter either from being released or having their contracts completed.

Most notable among those cut by the UFC is Dean Barry. He only had one fight with the promotion, but was disqualified for that pretty nasty eye gouge against Mike Jackson last April.

Two Asian fighters have also been removed from the roster in Philippines’ Mark Striegl and China’s Zhu Rong. The popular Filipino fighter in Striegl confirmed to Bloody Elbow that he learned about the release on Tuesday. The former URCC champ signed a four fight deal with the UFC in 2020, but lost his two bouts with the promotion against tenured vet Chas Skelly, and a short notice debut vs Said Nurmagomedov. Rong, on the other hand, went 1-2 with the UFC. His lone win came against Brandon Jenkins (0-2 UFC), who also happens to be part of this same list of cuts.

Perhaps the most surprising fighter on the list here is Fares Ziam (2-2 UFC), who recently lost to a top prospect in Terrance McKinney, but was coming off two wins prior. Former LFA champion Austin Hubbard (3-4 UFC) and DWCS vet Devonte Smith (3-3 UFC) also found some success in the UFC prior to their recent streak.

Former opponents of hyped prospects have also been cut in Kris Moutinho (0-2 with UFC), who faced Sean O’Malley, and Luigi Vendramini (1-3 UFC), who lost to Paddy Pimblett.

Completing the list of sixteen fighters removed from the roster are Mike Grundy (1-3 UFC), Kazula Vargas (1-3), Kevin Croom (0-3, 1 NC UFC), Cameron Else (0-2 UFC), Micheal Gillmore (0-2 UFC), Bruno Souza (0-2 UFC), and Jesse Strader (0-2 UFC).