The Ultimate Fighting Championship has handed out $5,000 Twitter bonuses to fighters for such categories as “most followers”, “biggest percentage growth of followers”, and “most creative”.
Walking away with $10,000 for two bonuses, former Strikeforce middleweight champ Cung Le received the money for “most followers” and “biggest percentage of followers” categories.
Zuffa unveiled the concept of Twitter bonuses last spring for fighters in the UFC and Strikeforce, in order to increase awareness through social media. Bonuses are being handed out quarterly, with each winner receiving $5,000 in bonus money.
Winning a bonus for “Most Followers” were UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva (@SpiderAnderson), UFC heayweight champion Junior Dos Santos (@Junior_Cigano), heavyweight Brendan Schaub (@BrendanSchaub), and middleweight Cung Le (@CungLe185).
Another four fighters who earned an extra $5,000 each for the “biggest percentage growth in followers” category where former UFC heavyweight champ Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (@MinotauroMMA), heavyweight Roy ‘Big Country’ Nelson (@RoyNelsonMMA) welterweight Jake Ellenberger (@EllenbergerMMA) and middleweight Cung Le (@CungLe185).
The last category announced for bonuses, was “most creative’ which included fighters former Strikeforce middleweight champ Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) who won for Stache Bash, bantamweight Joseph Benavidez (@JoeB135) who won for #JOBEs, welterweight Duane “Bang” Ludwig (@DUANEBANGCOM) for his fastest KO petition, and heavyweight Pat Barry (@HypeOrDie) for this video of Mirko ‘Crop Cop’ singing “California Dreaming”.
Despite the success of the Twitter campaign, there has been some issues, most notably an incident involving former WEC champ Miguel Torres who was cut from the UFC after a controversial Tweet about a “rape van” last December. Torres has since made amends for his Tweet by visiting several women’s shelters and was re-instated into the UFC by promotion President Dana White last month.