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What We Talk About When We Talk About UFC Fighter Pay

Filed under: UFCIt probably tells us something that UFC president Dana White knew he hated ESPN’s Outside the Lines segment on fighter pay well before he saw it. One gets the sense that he hated the topic more than the source or the approach, and the U…

Filed under: UFC

It probably tells us something that UFC president Dana White knew he hated ESPN’s Outside the Lines segment on fighter pay well before he saw it. One gets the sense that he hated the topic more than the source or the approach, and the UFC’s heavy-handed response to the story only confirms that this is a conversation the UFC would probably rather stop before it starts.

ESPN tells us that many UFC fighters are practically despondent about their pay, even if it can’t name any of them or produce any meaningful, verifiable financial figures that make the case. The piece questions Lorenzo Fertitta’s claim that the UFC pays somewhere “in the neighborhood” of half its revenue to fighters, as most major sports leagues do, but it can’t disprove it. And when ESPN’s John Barr says he’s spoken with “more than 20 current, former, and potential UFC fighters,” the savvy viewer is right to stop and ask just what he means by “potential” UFC fighters, and how many of the former fighters are guys like Ken Shamrock, who is the only fighter quoted in the piece, and who is, shall we say, not the most reliable or unbiased of sources on the topic.

In response, the UFC crafted a clever little piece of propaganda featuring interviews with fighters Forrest Griffin, Chuck Liddell, and Matt Serra, all of whom have nothing but positive things to say about how the UFC compensates its fighters. Shocking right? And here I thought that when the UFC showed up at Griffin’s house with a camera he’d have used the opportunity to unload on his employers with one bitter complaint after another. And who could have guessed that Liddell, who was given a cushy, do-nothing corporate gig with the UFC once his fighting days were finished, would be so supportive? Never saw that one coming, I tell you.

More: White Calls ESPN Report ‘Piece of Trash’ as UFC Releases Its Own Report

The UFC loves to tout its post-fight bonuses, all that off-the-books money that it gives away out of sheer generosity and appreciation, and it does so again in its video rebuttal. It’s true that the UFC literally gives away money that it doesn’t have to. I’ve talked to dozens of fighters who have told me stories of White writing them a check that they didn’t earn, contractually speaking. I’ve also talked to fighters who thought they went out of their way to hype a fight or put on a great show, only to have the UFC pat them on the back and send them on their way without the extra monetary appreciation they were expecting.

The current bonus system keeps fighters in a constant state of financial anticipation. They know the big money is out there somewhere, but unlike in most employer/employee relationships, it isn’t laid out in print anywhere exactly what they need to do to get their hands on it. In that sense, fighters are like a primitive tribe of people worshipping inscrutable gods. They keep putting different offerings on the altar, trying different dances to make it rain. Sometimes it rains, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some guys are thirstier than others. Some guys are better dancers.

One thing the ESPN piece and the UFC response have in common is a lack of detailed financial information. For a conversation entirely about money, there aren’t a lot of numbers being thrown around here. ESPN would probably blame the UFC for that, arguing that because it doesn’t release information about how much it makes and how much it pays out, we can’t really know whether Fertitta’s claims are accurate. That’s true, but as Fertitta points out, the UFC doesn’t have to release any of that information, and it’s definitely not going to invite a closer scrutiny of its books if it doesn’t have to. What company would?

But this argument gets us nowhere. ESPN says fighters want more money, which isn’t at all hard to believe. So do NFL and NBA players. The difference is how they go about getting it.

It’s easy to swat the UFC upside the head about fighter pay and ask why it isn’t sharing a bigger slice of the revenue pie with fighters, but it’s also naive. Why should the UFC be the lone company in this capitalist dogfight of ours to simply decide, out of sheer altruism, to give more and take less? If fighters are really unhappy with the deal they’re getting from the UFC, they need to do what athletes in every other major pro sport have done: form a union.

What would it take to form a fighter union? The same thing it takes in any industry: a willingness to stand together, and the participation of a few key people. If Georges St. Pierre, Jon Jones, and Anderson Silva banded together with a few of the lower-tier fighters, the UFC would have little choice but to recognize their union. If it didn’t — if it decided instead to cut its top three champions for daring to organize — it would bring such an avalanche of bad publicity down upon itself that it would wish it had signed a blank check instead. A mess like that could easily end in congressional hearings and a sponsor exodus, and no one at the UFC wants either.

Then again, what do GSP, Jones, and Silva need a union for? They’re doing fine as it is. They’re rich and well taken care of by the UFC, so why speak up and potentially cost themselves money? Why should they care what Octagon newbies are getting paid?

In other words, the people who are most capable of creating a union and addressing issues like fighter pay and general transparency are the people who need it least. It’s pointless to address these complaints to the UFC, which isn’t going to simply decide to give away more money just to keep reporters away. Instead, bring it up with GSP. Bring it up with Dan Henderson and Frankie Edgar. Ask them if they’re willing to do what’s necessary to secure a better future for the fighters of tomorrow, even if it means angering the UFC brass today.

That might be a harder sell in the fight business than it is among pro baseball or football players. Those guys are used to working together against a common foe, and maybe that makes it easier to unite them against greedy owners. MMA fighters, on the other hand, are more accustomed to a certain brand of self-reliance. They’re used to a world where there’s only one champ in each division, one man sitting at the head of the table and eating his fill for as long as he can hold on to the chair. They’re all certain that they’ll be that man some day, so none are eager to complain that he’s the only one getting a decent meal. You come into that world and tell them to unite in service of the fighters they either don’t know or don’t care about, and you might not get such a warm reception.

But this is how it’s gone in every pro sport. The NFL players of today might enjoy great salaries, solid pension plans, and health care for their later years when the bill for all they’ve done to their bodies comes due — all things that UFC fighters need and deserve — but they didn’t get it by waiting around for the owners to give it up voluntarily. It never works that way. Not in any business.

If fighters want to do something about their pay and their treatment in the UFC, it’s up to them to join together and make it happen. For that, they need powerful leaders who don’t need them. If those leaders decide it’s not worth it, that they’re doing just fine on their own, then at least we’ll have our answer. But asking the UFC when it’s going to fork over more money to fighters is like asking a CEO when he’s going to give himself a pay cut so factory workers can get a raise. Change won’t come on its own, via some self-imposed sense of fairness. It’s going to take a struggle, and that struggle is going to have to begin with the fighters.

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Outside the Lines Investigates UFC Pay, But Questions Remain

Filed under: MMA Media Watch, UFCSunday morning marked the airing of an Outside the Lines segment on ESPN that was denounced by UFC President Dana White before he had even seen it — a show that presented the UFC’s pay model as one that richly rewards …

Filed under: MMA Media Watch, UFC

Sunday morning marked the airing of an Outside the Lines segment on ESPN that was denounced by UFC President Dana White before he had even seen it — a show that presented the UFC’s pay model as one that richly rewards a handful of favorite stars while paying the majority of fighters as interchangeable drones.

White has already promised a response, and he’ll surely say that ESPN’s report contained incomplete information about how much the company pays its fighters. And he’ll surely be right, for the simple reason that the UFC, like many private businesses, keeps what it pays its workers confidential. ESPN deserves credit for attempting to uncover the closely guarded secret of how much UFC fighters actually make, but specific dollar amounts were lacking in this report.

For all the work that went into the Outside the Lines report, we still don’t know how much the UFC really pays its fighters.

“Outside the Lines has spoken with more than 20 current, former and potential UFC fighters, as well as agents and promoters,” ESPN’s John Barr said as he strolled around a cage in the televised segment. “To a person, they say UFC fighters have not received their fair share of the company’s rapidly increasing revenue. Nearly all of them also refused to speak on camera, for fear the UFC would blackball them.”

But the fact that ESPN couldn’t get any active fighters to speak — and especially to reveal specific dollar amounts — was the biggest flaw in the report. The report did make a strong case that highly paid UFC fighters make far more than low-level fighters make. In that respect the UFC follows a pay model similar to that of Hollywood studios, where a handful of stars make the bulk of the money, and the bit players are left with much less.

More: Fertitta Hits Back at ESPN Over Fighter Pay

And while UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta claimed that the UFC pays its fighters in the neighborhood of 50 percent of all the promotion’s revenues, ESPN’s investigation made a convincing case that the UFC actually pays less than that.

However, there were also some weaknesses of ESPN’s reporting, which pegged the actual amount the UFC pays its fighters as “roughly 10 percent of the revenue.”

ESPN.com initially reported that the median annual income for UFC fighters was $17,000 to $23,000 a year, citing figures compiled by Rob Maysey of the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association. ESPN later corrected that report and said the $17,000 to $23,000 figure was actually the median pay per fight, not per year. However, even those corrected numbers do not appear to include sponsorships, bonuses and other forms of income that UFC fighters make.

And median pay per fight isn’t necessarily a particularly telling statistic. Consider a low-level UFC newcomer who signs a contract that guarantees him $6,000 to show, and another $6,000 to win for his first fight, then $8,000 for his second fight and $10,000 for his third. If that fighter fights three times, wins all three fights and earns a $75,000 Knockout of the Night bonus in his third fight, his median pay per fight would only be $16,000. But his total pay for the three fights would be $123,000, for an average of $41,000 a fight.

For an example of an entry-level fighter who has cashed in big time with bonuses, look at Edson Barboza, who signed with the UFC in 2010 after having six pro fights in small regional promotions. Barboza’s “show money” is reportedly just $6,000 a fight. But Barboza has won all four of his fights, meaning he also got a $6,000 win bonus for all four fights, and Barboza has received three Fight of the Night bonuses and one Knockout of the Night bonus (including both Fight of the Night and Knockout of the Night on Saturday at UFC 142). Thanks to the UFC’s bonus-heavy pay structure, Barboza’s total take for his first four UFC fights is at least $348,000, even before any sponsorships or other sources of income.

Even without bonuses, entry-level fighters aren’t necessarily doing too badly. One such fighter is UFC featherweight Jim Hettes. Hettes was an unknown in MMA circles, fighting on the regional scene, until he caught a break in August and signed with the UFC on a deal that paid him $6,000 to show and $6,000 to win on his first fight, and then $8,000 to show and $8,000 to win on his second fight. Hettes won both fights, for a total take of $28,000, and is now looking like one of the brightest young prospects in the featherweight division.

For a 24-year-old like Hettes, making $28,000 in five months while fighting in the UFC, with a good chance of making a lot more than that in the future, is a dream come true. ESPN didn’t quote any active fighters complaining about their pay on the record and indicated that the inability to find such fighters was a sign that fighters were scared to speak out. But maybe the reality is most UFC fighters are OK with what they make.

In fact, when low-level fighters are released from the UFC because of losses they suffer in the Octagon, they almost universally express a desire to win enough fights in other promotions to earn the right to return to the UFC — which strongly suggests that they don’t view the contracts they’ve just been released from as onerous.

The handful of mid-level fighters who have been released from the UFC for reasons having to do with issues outside the Octagon (fighters like Jon Fitch, Nate Marquardt and Miguel Torres) also generally apologize for their transgressions and ask to return to the UFC. Again, that suggests that the contracts they were released from were better than the contracts they could earn in other promotions.

And the few prominent fighters who have become free agents, like Tito Ortiz, have generally decided when the dust settled that the grass was greener inside the Octagon than out of it. UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock appeared in the Outside the Lines report, and it may not have been clear to viewers who aren’t MMA fans that Shamrock made millions of dollars in the UFC, or that Shamrock left the promotion because he wasn’t good enough to win inside the Octagon anymore, not because he objected to the terms of his contract. That was clarified, however, in the panel discussion that took place after Barr’s taped Outside the Lines report.

It is true that a handful of well-known fighters have been able to leave the UFC and make more money elsewhere. That includes former heavyweight champions Andrei Arlovski and Tim Sylvia, who both left the UFC to sign with Affliction in 2008. But Affliction fell apart after putting on just two fight cards, which suggests that its higher-paying business model didn’t work.

ESPN’s report would have been strengthened by addressing other promotions’ business models, including not only Affliction but also Bellator and other smaller American MMA organizations. The UFC is by far the biggest MMA promotion and therefore deserves to have by far the greatest scrutiny, but a comparison of the UFC’s pay scale with other promotions’ pay scales would have provided some valuable context.

Ultimately, as former UFC heavyweight champion Ricco Rodriguez said on Outside the Lines, “The UFC gives you the best opportunity.” It would be great to see more opportunities for more fighters, but at the moment, even if UFC pay is lacking, it beats the alternatives in MMA.

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Power Ranking the Top 10 Pre-Zuffa UFC Fighters

Although the UFC has only been around since 1993, it has undergone some major changes since its early days.Before Anderson Silva became the top fighter in the world, before Jon Jones became one of the most talked-about fighters in the world and before …

Although the UFC has only been around since 1993, it has undergone some major changes since its early days.

Before Anderson Silva became the top fighter in the world, before Jon Jones became one of the most talked-about fighters in the world and before Dana White and Zuffa became the owners to the now powerhouse organization, the UFC was a tournament where fighters of different martial arts disciplines fought to see who was the best.

Although the UFC would soon move out of the tournament style, it was still a much different product than what we’re used to seeing today.

As much as the UFC and MMA as a whole have changed, we should not forget its early fighters because they laid out the groundwork for what it has become today.

Here’s a look at the top 10 fighters from the pre-Zuffa UFC.

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“Ask Dan” #1: Dan Severn Still Wants Coleman and Shamrock, Will Likely Retire Next Year

(Severn and Shamrock: They were like the Michael Jackson and Prince of big, white grapplers who competed in early ’90s no-holds-barred matches.)

Happy Movember, everybody! In honor of the hairiest month of the year, we convinced UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn to write a weekly column for CagePotato.com. For the first installment, he plucked some topics from our Facebook page, but he’s up for answering anything about his life, career, and moustache, so drop your own suggestions in the comments section. Visit DanSevern.com and Dan’s Facebook page for more Beast-related updates, and join the CagePotato Movember team if you want to help support a good cause!

Matthew Poulin asks: How many fights do you still want?

Dan Severn: It’s not so much how many fights I want to have. I want specific fights right now. I’ve had some verbal offers but haven’t had the opportunity to bring some of these matches to life. Two particular matches I’m still interested are ones with Mark Coleman and Ken Shamrock. Realistically, I think that 2012 will be my final year as an MMA competitor. So whatever gets done gets done; whatever doesn’t, I’ll have to learn to live with I guess.

(Severn and Shamrock: They were like the Michael Jackson and Prince of big, white grapplers who competed in early ’90s no-holds-barred matches.)

Matthew Poulin asks: How many fights do you still want?

Matthew Gingerfunky Hoggart asks: Do you regret taking your last fight?

I can’t regret taking the fight but it didn’t happen at the best time in my career. What the fans see is one aspect but they don’t have a clue as to what I endured for 3 ½ to 4 months before the fight in terms of taking care of my father. Prior to my last fight, my siblings and I were providing home hospice-type care for my father and since I have the most flexible schedule, I was the primary caregiver during the normal working day times. On weekends I would leave late Friday and would be back late Sunday to resume my duties. And I would not change that for the world.

Todd Levin asks: How did you come up with “The Severn”? It’s a very useful wrestling move that is not widely known.

Todd, I don’t even know what you’re asking me. If it’s a technique that you think I created, I’m not sure what you’re referring to specifically. I apologize. I do so many seminars and people are blown away by the mechanics of what I show. The unfortunate thing about a lot of the things I do is it’s not fan friendly because the spectators cannot see my opponent’s pain. But trust me; most people are blown away by the amount of pain that I can inflict. And there will come a day when they will realize what a 53 year old guy can really do.

Ben Silverfox Latham asks: I’d like to know what you think about the way the UFC has changed since you were in it all those years ago, and while you were in it did you ever think it could become so huge?

Okay well Ben, it had to change or else we would be thinking about it in past tense. There was a lot pressure that was coming down from athletic commissions, legislators and politicians who were looking to change the “No Holds Barred” style. The concessions that were made have created the byproduct that is mixed martial arts. As far as the excitement level and the potential for greatness…after watching the first two UFCs on VHS, as I watched other friends inside my living room react to what they were watching, I knew that there was something there. In some ways our society has advanced, but when it boils right down to it, there is a primal, prehistoric captivation about violent acts for people. For example, why does everybody slow down when they see an accident? Nobody admits that they want to see anything – even to themselves — but they do.

When I was watching in the beginning, I was able to view the pain. So as I was watching, I wasn’t watching as a fan to see what kind of outfit the fighters were coming out in or what their walkout music was. I was looking at the actual mechanics. What were the competitors actually bringing to the table…are they strikers? Are they grapplers? I think that fighters see things totally different. You study weakness and strengths of the competitors compared to your own set of skills.

Mike Skytte asks: What do you think of the development of today’s fighters?

Fighters will always develop according to the rules. For example, if they were to make any rule change – regardless of what it may be – you would see the athletes evolve in a different direction. Take the example of time limits. If there was unlimited time or if there were stalemates, that would change how athletes would prepare. The rules really dictate what the fighters are able to do and train for. Certain things that I teach right now are that you are able to exploit some of the rules in the way that you attack or counter-attack in the heat of the action, if the way that you apply the attack is disguised. There is black and white in the sport but there is also a lot of gray.

UFC History: Frank Shamrock on the Early Days of MMA & the UFC

MMA legend Frank Shamrock has just about seen and done it all in the sport of mixed martial arts. He has beaten a “who’s who” of the sport’s top fighters and developed himself into a brand, rather than just a fighter.He is a true pioneer and goes…

He is a true pioneer and goes back to a time when there were no rules, no multimillion dollar television contracts and there was a constant threat of the sport going dark.

Shamrock would leave the sport back in 2000 because no one was offering the opportunities that are presented to fighters today. Shamrock had a family to think of and at the time there was more money to be made outside of the sport than there was inside of it.

Thankfully, Shamrock made his way back to the cage in 2003 and not only created opportunities for himself to make money, but for other fighters as well.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Frank about just how far the sport has come. With UFC on Fox 1 fast approaching, I felt it was important to dig into the darker days of MMA. With the sport getting bigger and bigger everyday, why not get the opinion of someone who has had so much impact on mixed martial arts as a whole?

For that, there is no better man than Frank Shamrock.

Bryan Levick: What are some of your very first memories of the UFC back in the beginning? If you can tell the readers about the differences in how the sport was covered, governed and how the fighters were treated.

Frank Shamrock: Back then we really didn’t have any commissions to oversee the sport like we do today. There was a doctor who would handle your physical and go over all of your medicals. Fighters took care of their own stuff for the most part. We didn’t have locker rooms like the fighters do today, there were eight guys bunched into one room, and because of the tournament style you never knew who you were fighting.

BL: What was the media like back then? I would imagine you didn’t have the elaborate press conferences that are held today.

FS: There were a few regulars at each event. You had Joe Doyle of Full Contact Fighter, there were only about three or four steady guys, most of them were from the internet. Dave Meltzer was always around as was Eddie Goldman. Most of the media that came were first-timers who were usually there to report the bad side of the sport.

A lot of the mainstream media were clueless about the sport—it was definitely a weird time. We had to be cautious because we knew they were looking to report on the negative aspects of the sport. It was easy to pick the guys out, it was a lot of Wild West shit going on that’s for sure!

BL: Was there any type of drug testing done for illegal drugs, steroids, etc.?

FS: I don’t think so, I really don’t remember any testing being done and that can be attributed to the lack of any true commissions regulating the sport. This was well before the unified rules went into effect. When I first came along there was also only two weight classes, so you can imagine things were pretty crazy back then. The only reason they even came up with those weight classes was because the politicians were coming down so hard on them.

BL: Was there a lot of recreational drug use or heavy drinking in the early days of the sport? Was it done out in the open, was it hidden or was their an attitude of don’t look, don’t tell?

FS: I didn’t see any drug use myself, by the time I arrived in the UFC we had commissions looking after us. New Jersey in particular was very strict. I may not have seen any drug use, but you pretty much kept to yourself.

Regardless of what was going on, these guys were still fighters and they still had to take care of themselves. We were pretty serious about the sport and didn’t want to risk getting injured.

BL: Can you tell me a story that happened years ago that if it were to occur today would really shine a negative light on the sport?

FS: I remember when Harold Howard was leaving the Octagon and heading back through the small entrance area that led the fighters to the back. He had just won his fight to get into the semi-finals and he was hit by a rotating light right on the temple. He fell and was completely unconscious. He literally dropped like a sack of potatoes!

His team picked him up and got him on the examination table in the back and woke him up. Fifteen minutes later he was back in the Octagon fighting. I was a young man and I remember thinking to myself, this is freaking crazy! The doctor didn’t see it happen so he couldn’t be at fault, but with the amount of television coverage there is now, things like that would never happen.

BL: What were your initial expectations when you first arrived in the UFC? You had made a name for yourself over in Japan, especially in your fights against Bas Rutten. Could you see the potential for the sport and the organization?

FS: As soon as I saw it, I realized it had great potential. I always thought it would be one of the greatest sports in the world because it was so compelling. I thought the possibilities were endless. It was unfortunate because when I came around it was one of the slowest times for the sport.

I saw a ship sinking right before my very eyes, but I also knew and believed that it would be reborn and eventually take off again. It was crazy, incredibly dangerous and challenging, those were the reasons I stayed involved.

BL: When did you first retire? Was it after your fight with Tito Ortiz at UFC 22 in September of 1999? What was the main reason you decided to leave the sport?

FS: I left the UFC after the fight with Ortiz. Tito was the last super tough guy as I had already handled all of the other guys quite handily. I saw the sport was about to go dark for awhile. I tried my best to promote it and do whatever I could to help, but it was inevitable that there was going to be a period where MMA would go through some really lean years before it could make a serious comeback.

I didn’t want to keep fighting and risking injury to my body when the pay wasn’t where I needed it to be. I made a strategic decision to give it up after I fought Tito. I always planned on coming back when the sport was able to right itself and had a brighter future.

BL: When you first began training you were one of the first guys to concentrate on different disciplines. Who were some of your very first trainers?

FS: My first coach was my brother Ken. He taught me submission wrestling, the catch-as-catch-can style that he was famous for. Then I trained in Japan with Funaki and Suzuki. Then I learned jiu-jitsu and sambo with Oleg Taktarov and Gokor Chivichyan.

After that my main coach was Maurice Smith. All of my previous trainers were basically grapplers, while Smith was the first real striking coach I had. He was one of the best athletes involved with the sport at the time and was breaking into cardiovascular training and how to implement that into my fights.

I then met Javier Mendez from American Kickboxing Academy, and he incorporated the boxing aspect of the sport into everything I had brought with me. We kind of hit it off immediately and worked well together.

Part II of my interview with Frank Shamrock will be posted early next week. Shamrock discusses Dana White and their supposed beef as well as who he believes are some of the best fighters in the sport today.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

My First Fight: Rich Franklin

Filed under: UFCBy the time most fight fans so much as heard his name, Rich Franklin was already somebody. He had a successful UFC debut with a first-round TKO of Evan Tanner, then went on to shine at the very first Ultimate Fighter Finale, where he kn…

Filed under: UFC

By the time most fight fans so much as heard his name, Rich Franklin was already somebody. He had a successful UFC debut with a first-round TKO of Evan Tanner, then went on to shine at the very first Ultimate Fighter Finale, where he knocked out Ken Shamrock on Spike TV before claiming the UFC middleweight title in his next fight.

But if you hopped in a time machine and told the Rich Franklin of 1993 — then a senior at William Henry Harrison High School in Ohio — that this UFC stuff he was watching with his friends would eventually become his career, he probably would have laughed in your time-traveling face.

“I had no aspirations of becoming a pro fighter or anything like that,” Franklin says now. “But I saw the first UFC and I was immediately hooked.”

Sure, he did a little karate. He was even his sensei’s star pupil, and he felt pretty good about it. But in Franklin’s mind, that was as far as it went. He liked sports, and he also felt like he should know how to defend himself. That’s why, when he saw the UFC for the first time in November of 1993, it was an eye-opener.

I was like really? They were going to put me against this big guy? He was at least 50 pounds heavier than me.
— Rich Franklin“I remember thinking, if I ever get into a fight on the street I’d better know how to fight on the ground, because clearly some people know a lot more about it than others. So I started doing jiu-jitsu.”

Fortunately, there was a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu chapter in Cincinnati. As a college student studying to be a high school math teacher, Franklin began learning the finer points of the ground game. One thing led to another, and soon he added some kickboxing into his regimen. It was fun, and that was enough. At least for a little while. Then his friend, Josh Rafferty (later a contestant on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, put a simple question to Franklin.

“He said to me, ‘Look man, all you do is train, go to school, come home, and train some more. You train all day, so why don’t you try one of these fights and see if the training you’re doing is actually paying off?’ That’s why I took my first fight.”

But this was still Ohio in 1998, so it’s not as if there were major MMA events taking place every weekend. What few there were in the region weren’t exactly advertised on TV, either. Franklin and his friends had to ask around, but eventually they heard a rumor that there were regular fights at a gym in Muncie, Indiana. Franklin and Rafferty made the drive and sat through the entire event, which ended with a 6’2″, 260-pound self-described “Meat Truck” by the name of Kerry Schall putting a beating on some football player.

“I looked at Josh at the end of the night and said, ‘You know what? I think I could do this. Let’s give it a shot.’ We saw a flyer as we were leaving for another show about three months later and we decided, okay, this is the one we’ll train for.”

The good news was that training for an unregulated amateur fight in a gym in Indiana in 1998 was that you did not need to worry about cutting weight. You also didn’t need to worry about seeing a doctor or passing medicals. You simply called up the promoter and told him you wanted a fight, and then you called him up two weeks before the fight to reassure him that you weren’t going to back out. Then you showed up on fight night and waited your turn.

The bad news, Franklin soon realized, is that you had no idea who you’d be fighting. This hit home as he was sitting in the audience watching the night’s first few fights and talking with Schall, who he recognized from the previous event he’d attended.

“We introduced ourselves and Kerry said, ‘Oh, you’re the guy I was supposed to fight tonight, but I had to pull out because I’m sick,'” Franklin recalls. “I was like, really? They were going to put me against this big guy? He was at least 50 pounds heavier than me.”

But before he had too much of a chance to dwell on the implications of this revelation, the announcer called his name and summoned him to the cage. As Schall would delight in telling people years later, after he and Franklin had become good friends, when Franklin heard his own name he simply stood up, pulled off his tearaway warm-up pants like a male stripper, and strolled into the cage, ready to fight.

So I just let it go, and the crowd — all 200 of them or whatever it was — went from screaming and yelling to completely speechless.
— Rich FranklinThe other guy, as Franklin remembers it, was not quite as excited about the whole deal.

“He looked uneasy. As soon as we stepped in the cage, he looked like he didn’t really want to be there. I looked at his demeanor and his posture and I was like, I got this one in the bag. He was in something that he did not want to be in.”

As soon as the action started, Franklin realized why. His opponent that night — Franklin swears he was known only by the name ‘Seymour’ (“I guess he was like Madonna or something. He just had the one name. He was Seymour.”) — didn’t seem like he was quite ready for an amateur fight against a man who had five years of experience in both grappling and striking at a time when most fighters still specialized in one at the expense of the other.

But even though he quickly saw that his skills were ahead of Seymour’s, Franklin wasn’t totally sure what to do about it.

“This is how dumb I was: we come out and we’re mixing it up, and I end up taking him down. I’m kind of cross-mounted on him and I have a submission, but I let it go and go to another submission, and I have a shoulder lock almost completely locked out, but then I thought, you know, I trained all these months, all these years, for a 30-second fight? I’m going to let him up. So I just let it go, and the crowd — all 200 of them or whatever it was — went from screaming and yelling to completely speechless.”

Franklin released the submission and stood up. He indicated to Seymour that he, too, should get up. This seemed to confuse everyone — especially Seymour — and even Franklin soon had second thoughts.

“He got up and we mixed it up on our feet some more, but it was clear to me that I was just a step above this level of competition. At that point, I started to feel a little bad. Like, why didn’t I just finish him when I knew I had him beat? This is kind of a jerk thing to do.”

So Franklin handed out a tough dose of mercy in the form of a knee to the gut. Seymour collapsed on the mat. The ref stepped in and waved it off. A little over two minutes after it had started, his first MMA fight was over. After the way it had gone, he wasn’t quite sure what to think about it.

“I thought it would just be that one fight. Then a couple months later somebody asked me about doing another one and I thought, why not?”

Part of his enthusiasm was just a consequence of being an ignorant youth, he says. “Early in my fight career, I really thought I was the baddest man on the planet. I was young and stupid.”

I was like, whoa, you can actually make money fighting? That’s where it first clicked.
— Rich FranklinBut it was also the fact that, for one reason or another, the high school math teacher didn’t fully appreciate the risks he was taking.

“It wasn’t until my third amateur fight, where I kicked this guy in the jaw and broke his jaw in like three places — hurt him pretty bad, actually — that I finally took a step back and realized, hey, that could have been me. These are the consequences of fighting, and you never know who you’re getting in the cage with. From that point on, you start thinking about it a little more. The reality of things starts weighing on you a little more.”

Shortly thereafter the local promoter pulled Franklin aside and politely suggested he find a bigger organization to compete in, one with fighters who might give him more resistance. That’s when a different promoter offered him a couple hundred dollars to fight in his event, and a light bulb went off in Franklin’s head.

“I was like, whoa, you can actually make money fighting? That’s where it first clicked.”

Gradually the purses and the events got bigger, and in his fourth year of teaching Franklin decided to give up his full-time job at an Ohio high school in order to pursue fighting as a career.

“Before that I’d make a thousand bucks here or there and have a little extra money to buy Christmas gifts or something. But to do this and really make money at it? That was a pretty wild idea. The sport was only just then evolving to the point where people were starting to make real money at it,” he says now. “That fourth year I took like three fights and I won and ended up quitting my job. Seems like it all panned out pretty well.”

Check out past installments of My First Fight, including Matt Lindland, Jorge Rivera, and more. Rich Franklin is scheduled to appear on this Monday’s MMA Hour which starts at 1 p.m. ET.

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