White isn’t afraid to throw around record-breaking numbers when speaking to the press, but that all changes when it comes to paying the fighters, according to Jackson.
Does Dana White lie and inflate numbers as a promotional tactic to make the UFC and Power Slap seem bigger than they are? According to former UFC champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, he absolutely does.
Jackson was one of the promotion’s biggest stars and fought for the company twelve times between 2007 and 2013. He also fought with the company and White regularly, accusing them of under-paying and under-promoting him. In a new episode of his JAXXON podcast, “Rampage” shared how White pumped up his pay-per-view numbers while talking to the press while downplaying them in negotiations.
“One thing I was upset about Dana is that in my contract, if I sold over a million pay-per-view buys, my PPV numbers jumped up like dramatically,” Jackson said. “And the fight between me and Rashad Evans, I broke that threshold. And [White] told me, ‘No, you did like 900 and something, right up on a million.’ But then in press, he told everybody ‘We sold over a million buys.”
“I hit him up like, ‘Pay me what the f— you told the fans,’” he continued. “He says, ‘No, that part of the promotion, you make yourself seem better.’ I said ‘Alright, good. Whatever you f—ing put out there in the press that we made, that’s what you pay me on. Don’t pay me on what you f—ing telling me that we made. Pay me on what you f—ing promoting out there.’ And that’s what left a bad taste in my mouth.”
“I ain’t gonna lie, when I do my contracts, you ask for the world. Because we put our life on the line to entertain the fans, you know? I do it for the love and stuff too, but sometimes when people don’t value you, you kind of lose the love for it. And that’s the reason why I took a step back from MMA, but now this podcast is bringing back the love.”
This isn’t a new story — Jackson was extremely vocal about the issue when he left the UFC in 2013.
“You lying somewhere,” he said at the time. “You either lying to me or you lying to the press about the pay-per-view numbers. If they’re doing it to me, I’m sure they’re doing it to other fighters.”
White responded by revealing Jackson’s earnings with the UFC: $15.2 million, which seems like a nice big number until you consider the promotion raked in over $50 million in pay-per-view sales alone off Jackson’s first two fights. When you’re making that much money for the UFC, do they really have to nickel and dime you at every turn? Apparently yes, yes they do.