Ronda Rousey‘s UFC 157 payday has been revealed, and it’s actually quite shocking how little she made.
According to MMAWeekly.com staff, Rousey took home a rather unimpressive $90,000, half of which is from a bonus given to her as a result of her victory. By comparison, Lyoto Machida ($200,000) and Dan Henderson ($250,000) took home more than double that total.
Now, that’s not to say that $90,000 isn’t a lot of money to the average person—and we’d all love to make that amount of dough for one night’s work—but with all Rousey brought to the pay-per-view and the UFC in general, it’s chump change.
For starters, Rousey and her opponent, Liz Carmouche, had the most entertaining fight of the night. Carmouche pushed Rousey to the limit, which wasn’t expected, only to have her efforts thwarted in an exciting fashion.
For her efforts, Carmouche received a measly $12,000.
Henderson and Machida were collectively the biggest names going into UFC 157, but together they put on a bout that was one of the least talked about of the night. It wasn’t entirely a waste, but it still left a lot to be desired.
If not for Rousey and Carmouche‘s fight, this pay-per-view would have been lost in the sauce of UFC history.
The only hope for a bigger payday for both female fighters can come in different forms and was listed in a report by Maggie Hendricks of Yahoo! Sports:
It does not include money the fighters make of pay-per-view sales. Quite often, fighters at the top of the card will make a percentage of the pay-per-view profits. Early reports have UFC 157 with 400-500,000 pay-per-views, so it could mean a good payday for the headliners.
The UFC also is known to give out “locker room bonuses,” or extra money because of a good performance that they are not required to report to the athletic commissions.
Hopefully, these unreported sums of money will deservedly bring Rousey and Carmouche‘s grand total far higher than was originally reported. It would be a shame to think that the two biggest reasons UFC 157 was of any interest were paid that poorly.
Without Rousey and Carmouche, this pay-per-view likely doesn’t come close to the buy numbers mentioned above, because it was the single most intriguing fight on the card based on its historic significance.
Specifically, in regard to Rousey, her popularity is growing at an epic pace. Not only is she becoming a fan favorite with the overwhelming amount of men who watch the sport, but she is now opening a door to a female market that has never been available before to the UFC.
This incredible rise to fame will only continue for Rousey, and with it, new sponsors and fanbases will emerge to further push UFC into the national conversation as a must-watch sport. UFC President Dana White can thank Rousey (and to a lesser extent Carmouche) for that, and it should bring Rousey‘s base pay way up in the coming events she participates in.
However, it appears women still have a long way to go in order to catch up to what the men make, which is an old, sad tale in the history of this country.
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