Why do boxers make more than MMA fighters?

Why do boxers make more than MMA fighters? Is it even true that they do? It seems to be the common perception, based on the enormous purses reported by the likes of a Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao. At the same time, one can just as easily point to the $10,000 to show and $10,000 to win minimums that a fighter on a UFC prelim will earn and compare it to the $1,500 purse of a boxer on a HBO prelim and ask if it isn’t perhaps boxing that pays less overall.

The bragging rights that fans seek when they make these comparisons are silly, to be sure, but comparing the two sports does make sense when considering the fact that there is nothing else to compare them to. Unlike major league sports which involve multiple (unionized) athletes employed by an individually owned team which competes in a league against other individually owned teams, prizefighting is conducted between two individuals contracted for a contest to be presented by a promoter.

The problem with the comparisons we see made between boxing and MMA is that they involve only the smallest percentage of actual prizefighters. The fact that Floyd Mayweather made a guaranteed $100 million for a single bout tells us only that Floyd Mayweather is doing very well and nothing about how the rest of the professional boxers are compensated. The fact that a UFC prelim fighter makes more than a boxer on the prelims means very little if there are more main card opportunities that pay better for boxers.

In an attempt to come up with a more complete picture of the current pay distribution in both boxing and MMA, I requested from the Athletic Commissions of Nevada, Florida, and California all of the payouts for professional boxing and MMA events held in their states in 2015. While Nevada and Florida were able to meet my request, due to the number of events California held, they were unable to supply me with the full year. Narrowing my request, and collecting several payouts on my own, I did end up with 6 months worth of payouts for California.

The result was the payout info for 148 professional events (58 MMA and 90 boxing) which gave us 2,146 total purses (826 MMA and 1,320 boxing), which ranged from $0 all the way up to Mayweather’s $100 million. This represents roughly 10% of all MMA events and 15% of all boxing events held under the Association of Boxing Commissions last year.

Some of the purse info is obviously incomplete, since we could only use what was reported. Several MMA fighters and boxers at the highest levels of the sport receive pay-per-view points, while some at the very bottom are only paid on consignment with tickets. In both cases I went with the reported purse amount, since neither amount is guaranteed. (A future article will delve into the amount of money UFC fighters actually make when we include non-disclosed pay, both contractual and discretionary.)

For boxing, the combined total amount paid from the 1,320 boxing purses was $228,291,452 with an individual purse average of $172,948. This is skewed more than a little by the enormous payouts Floyd Mayweather (who’s reported purses were $100 million and $32 million for his two bouts in 2015) and Manny Pacquiao (who’s reported purse was $25 million for his match against Mayweather) received. If you remove their three reported purses from last year (which totaled $157 million) then the combined total for the other 1,317 boxing purses was $71,291,452 which averages out to $54,132.

A more telling statistic than the mean average for what most boxers earn is the median average. The median average in 2015 for a boxer in our three states was $3,250.

For mixed martial arts the combined total of the 826 purses was $17,936,216 for a mean average of $21,714 per purse. The median average for MMA fighters was even lower than that of boxers, a meager $1,250.

When looking specifically at only UFC fighters, the average was much higher with the mean being $63,651 and the median $28,000.

The median average for all 2,146 prizefighters purses was $2500.

While it is readily apparent that most athletes from both sports make very little, with the mode being only $1,000, it appears as if MMA fighters on average are worse off than their boxing counterparts. Of the 1,320 boxing purses we looked at, 299 (or 23%) of them were for $1,000 or less, while of the 826 MMA fighter purses 400 (48%) were for $1,000 or less. Even though MMA fighters payouts made up only 38% of the total collected they were 57% of all prizefighters that were paid $1,000 or less on a bout.

The reverse was mostly true as well, with a much higher number of boxers occupying the very top of the pay ladder. Of the top 100 purses, those making $116,000 or more, 68 were paid to boxers. Of the 19 biggest purses, all were paid to boxers. The highest reported MMA purse was Anderson Silva and his $800,000 from UFC 183, which was tied with three boxers for 20th place on our list of highest paid purse.

“While it is readily apparent that most athletes from both sports make very little, it appears as if MMA fighters on average are worse off than their boxing counterparts”

These numbers are undoubtedly distorted by the fact that much of what the top MMA fighters make is not reported to athletic commissions. While boxers payouts are also underreported (Mayweather, Pacquiao, Alvarez, and Cotto were all thought to have made much more than what was reported publicly thanks to foreign television and shares in the pay-per-view revenue) it seems to be an even bigger issue with the very top UFC fighters. According to several sources with intimate knowledge of the contracts of top MMA fighters, after combining reported pay with PPV bonuses and side agreements, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, and Conor McGregor each earned between $4 million to $5 million for three of their matches held in Nevada last year. This would be enough to put those three purses on the list of top 10 payouts in California, Florida, and Nevada last year (but not enough for any of them to make the top 5).

Where MMA does much better is when one looked at that upper middle class of prizefighters. If we use the UFC’s current minimum of $10,000 as the threshold for entry into the upper middle class, then of the 826 MMA fighter payouts, 255 (31%) …

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