UFC president Dana White has angrily reacted to questions about fighter pay and called out light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones and BMF titlist Jorge Masvidal for seeking new deals after signing long-term contracts less than a year ago. Speaking on ESPN’s First Take White responded furiously when repeatably asked about the current swell of fighters unhappy with their happy, he said.
“Jon Jones just signed a new deal less than a year ago. He’s got eight fights left on his deal. What do you want me to tell you? The guy’s got a deal. Same thing with Masvidal. Masvidal just signed a new deal seven months ago. These guys both got brand new deals that they were more than happy to sign less than a year ago.”
The UFC boss went even further when pushed on the fighter pay question by retired NFL star Domonique Foxworth, he said.
“Does anybody feel like they make too much money? Nobody does. If we were talking about a thing where these guys had old contracts from three years ago and it’s like ‘that was three years ago that I did this deal, let’s [renegotiate].’ They signed these less than a year ago. This was months ago.
“By the way, I don’t know if you know this but we’re in a pandemic and no other sports are going. Oh, by the way, every other sport out there is arguing about money right now. I haven’t laid off one employee. I haven’t asked any of my fighters to take less money, and you don’t hear me out here crying about, ‘No, I don’t get any gates, I don’t have this, I don’t have [that].’ You don’t hear me crying. I’m running my business. I’m paying everybody. Right now, if you think it’s easy to be a business owner right now here in today, you are right out of your mind. There has never been a harder time to do business than right now. Guess what? I’m pulling it off.”
“So right now we’re in a pandemic and all this stuff is going on. We just signed a contract eight months ago. You see me saying, ‘Oh no, no, this is going on and that’s going on, I have to pay you less money.’”
“No, I’m paying them exactly the same amount of money no matter what’s going on. In the history of this company, I’ve never asked a fighter to go backward, ever. I have 630 fighters under contract and we’re talking about two.”
Do you think Dana White and the UFC should be more open to discussing the fighter pay issue?