Just as Sean Strickland was beginning the peel back the curtain, offering fans and aspiring fighters a very bleak look at what it means to be a UFC competitor, his mic was cut off.
Joining Extra Rounds host T.J. DeSantis and UFC Hall of Famer Don Frye to promote the UFC in a live broadcast from Professional Bull Riders, which is owned by UFC corporate parent Endeavor, Strickland decided to flip the script, sharing his honest advice for anyone hoping to one day step inside the Octagon.
After 30 minutes of relatively harmless discussion, Sean Strickland decided to spice things up by asking Frye how much money he made during his time in the UFC. “I think we all wanna f*cking know this, bro, because I’ve heard numbers of like guys [from] your time, and they tell me how much they make, bro, and it makes you want to cry a little bit,” Strickland said with a smile.
DeSantis quickly pivoted to the $50,000 prize awarded to the tournament winner. Frye added that the wage for everyone else was a meager $500. That’s all Strickland needed to hear before launching into why aspiring fighters should find a different career path.
Sean Strickland Goes in On UFC Fighter Pay
“Hey, you want to be a UFC fighter,” Strickland said in a video he posted to his Instagram. “$500 bucks. … But you know, it’s not that much different now, man. It’s funny, this guy came up to me, and he said, ‘Hey, you know, my son’s 17, he trains, he wants to be a fighter. Do you have any advice?’
“I said, ‘Don’t do it.’ He goes, ‘What do you mean?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, let me explain to you, sir.’ Let me explain if you guys have kids at home who want to be a fighter. Let me explain to you the joy of being an MMA fighter.
“I was like, ‘You see the Contender [Series fighters], what do you think they make?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know.’ I go, ‘They make five and five. If they lose, they make five.’ And he goes, ‘Damn.’ I go, ‘If you lose, guess what, you’re not going to UFC.’ So this entire life you could have spent building a life, doing any other aspect in life, you chose to train fighting.
“So let’s just say you make it now you make it to the UFC. Well, hey, guess what, what do you think they sign the average guy on? … Ten and 10 for this man. So you make it to UFC, you get signed, 10 and 10, and now you fight for 10 and 10, and you’ve spent your entire life working for this one goal. You get the blue check mark, you get the UFC in your logo, you get all the people, you get all of it now.
“So you go 2-2 and maybe they’re boring fights, and the UFC cuts you, and now guess what? You have made a total of … $60,000 your entire career, and you have no other option because you can’t be a part-time fighter. You’ve got to be full-time.
“So now you’re a 24-year-old man looking yourself in the mirror saying, ‘I spent my entire life doing this one thing and I’ve made $24,000, or $60,000. What do I do now? You go teach cardio kickboxing.
“And that’s, like, the damn shame of like most industry. It’s like you get kind of Weinstein-d. They put this big old f*cking UFC logo — and again, I love UFC, guys. I make more money in the UFC than f*cking, I mean, I am not a poor man, you guys. I would be in the rich category, which still f*cking shocks me every time I think about it. But they put this big old f*cking logo and you sell your f*cking soul for it. You sell your f*cking soul for it, man.”
‘Technical Difficulties’ Won’t Quiet the Middleweight champ
That’s where things were abruptly shut down on the UFC Fight Pass feed, but Strickland offered up a little bit more of the footage and his thoughts on Instagram.
“How many people in this sport end up not being poor after they’re done? And this isn’t NFL poor … they’re not gonna hear this sh*t. They’re not going to air this sh*t, but I’m just telling you how this f*cking goes.
“We’re not talking about, ‘Hey, I was in the NFL, I got paid millions of dollars, and I went and gambled on drugs and hookers.’ That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking on, I made $60,000. Now, what’s next? So when we talk about how much Don Fry made and goddamn, it’s shocking and how much most guys make.
“My advice to anybody, enjoy….”
In the caption on Instagram, Strickland made light of the “technical difficulties” and attempted to explain that his gripe over pay is not exclusive to the UFC.
“Think this was cut????” Strickland wrote. “‘They’re not going to air any of this’ technical difficulties lmao!!! This is an all-industry thing, Jeff Bezos can go build a rocket to go to space but can’t pay a couple more dollars. This isn’t a UFC thing, this an American thing, that’s what I was saying when the stream cut.”
It certainly seems like the UFC took it as a UFC thing.
MMA Fighting revealed that they had reached out to promotion for comment which has not yet been returned.