UFC president, Dana White has claimed that any media member who discusses the topic of fighter pay is a “scumbag“, amid rising tension regarding the issue of the lack of fair compensation issued to fighters under the promotion’s banner.
Over the course of this year alone, notable high-profile fighters such as middleweight contenders, Paulo Costa and Jared Cannonier have both caused a stir regarding the issue of fighter pay. The Brazilian first questioned why the likes of Jake and Logan Paul could earn considerably higher fight purses compared to himself, despite the fact they have no combat sports background, while Cannonier called for a union to be introduced in order for fighters to gain a larger percentage of revenue from promotors and promotions.
UFC bantamweight contender, Sean O’Malley also questioned recently why the organization appears to have an issue fairly compensating fighters what they are worth. High-profile stars such as Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz, Dustin Poirier, Jon Jones, and Jorge Masvidal have also voiced their issues regarding the subject in the past.
Earlier this year, White reacted to the rising uproar regarding the issue of fair fighter pay, brashly claiming that because the UFC was his organization, he would continue to run it the way it is currently running. And that any “critics” of their compensation model should create their own promotions.
“The reality is anybody who’s being critical outside of the fighters themselves don’t know anything anyway,” Dana White said. “They don’t actually know what these guys are making. And the fighters don’t ever come out and tell you. There’s no gag order on any of these guys. These guys can come out at any time and tell you what they’re making. I have no problem with that. But they don’t, do they? No, they do not. So, it’s sort of a Catch-22.“
“Fighter pay has continuously gone up every year since we owned the business,” White continued. “Obviously, there’s been tons more opportunities with the outfitting policy, some of the sponsors that we’ve brought in that spend tons of money with the fighters too. There’s a lot of opportunities here for the fighters. And listen, there’s never gonna be a guy that’s coming out and saying, ‘Yeah, they’re (the UFC) paying me too much. They’re overpaying me.’ And all of these guys that are champions share in the pay-per-view revenue (PPV points).“
Speaking with former UFC heavyweight contender, Travis Browne on his podcast, Tough Business this week, White called media members who report on the issue of fighter pay, “scumbags” — as well as claiming that they just want attention.
“You have all these scumbags out there that know nothing about the business telling all the fighters, ‘Oh, you’re all being underpaid. You’re not being paid enough money. You’re not this’ — it goes on every f*cking day,’” White said.
“Every media member that talks about fighter pay is a scumbag who is basically just out there to get attention, because they literally know nothing about the business or the pay, or how any of this sh*t works,” White said. “It’s all part of the game. That’s what they are and that’s what they do, and I literally could give a f*ck.” (H/T Bloody Elbow)
As for the podcast host, Browne, the Hawaiian veteran himself claimed that fighters raising issues with fighter pay under the UFC’s banner, were simply just “whiny little b*tches“.
“You guys (the UFC) have always treated me right,” Browne said. “The pay has been there, and again, it’s always been at least what the contract was, and most of the time it was more. So these people that are complaining, people in the media that don’t f*cking hear that, they hear the little b*tch that’s crying and complaining. Because you get these, like, entitled people. Or I don’t know where the f*ck it comes from. It’s like, they’re just whiny little b*tches, and then they go to more whiny little b*tches that’ll write about it.“
Browne, who last competed professionally at UFC 213 in July 2017, is still under UFC contract and is still placed in the USADA testing pool — with his submission loss to Aleksei Oleinik coming as his fourth consecutive Octagon loss.