Dana White Talks Fighter Pay, Says MMA Purses 'Smoke' Boxing's

Fighter pay.

Other than Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT), the topic of how much exactly Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters get paid has always been one of the, if not the most, highly debated topics in mixed martial arts (MMA).

Often getting compared to the big time paydays that the sport of boxing shells out to its top prize fighters such as Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, MMA, specifically the UFC, has come under scrutiny for paying its athletes far less when compared to its combat counterparts.

Sure "Pacman" and "Money" have been the recipients of huge multimillion dollar paydays in the past: however, according to UFC President Dana White, when you go down the boxing superstar pecking order, the numbers drop significantly and according to the him, the UFC's current pay structure "smokes" that of boxing.

Speaking to Fox 11 Sports, White touches on the hot subject and says the reason you don't know exactly how much UFC superstars such as welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre and middleweight title holder Anderson Silva make, is because they don't want you to know:

"Well we do, that is the guaranteed amount. That's the guaranteed amount. So here's the way that this really works. You hear about Manny and Floyd, those are the two guys that are getting paid the big money. You hear a guaranteed $26 million, you hear Floyd $40 million, he's betting $3 million on the game, and, he's money Mayweather, you know. The reality is if you look at this Dawson / Ward fight that just happened last weekend, I think (Ward) made about $1.6 million and Dawson made $600,000. That's a big fight outside of a Pacquiao / Floyd fight, and if you look at the UFC numbers compared to Boxing now, we smoke them. The card this weekend, .then when you look down their card, the numbers drop big time. When you look at a UFC card, the numbers are consistent all the way through. I'm not running around your question here, the answer to your question is, these guys obviously get paid alot more money than what you're seeing on things. They come in, they negotiate a contract, and there's other ways that these guys get paid through bonuses and incentives. In no way, shape or form is there anywhere in their contract that says they couldn't come out and tell you what they make. If Georges St. Pierre was sitting in this chair, or Anderson Silva, and they wanted to tell you what their last payday was, they absolutely, positively have the right to do that, there's no gag order on them or anything; they don't want you to know, they don't want anybody to know. It's no different than you not wanting your salary posted in the paper this weekend."

Here more from White on the issue of fighter pay after the jump:

In this past weekend's pay-per-view (PPV) boxing event, Sergio Martinez outclassed Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. to reclaim his WBC middleweight title, earning $1.4 million plus a percentage of the pay-per-view (PPV) sales, while Chavez earned his biggest payday to date, $3 million in defeat, according to ESPN.

Last year, St. Pierre revealed when it's all said and done, at the end of the night, he makes around $4 to 5 million per fight.

How about it Maniacs, what's your take on the head honcho's comments? Are the much-publicized big paydays of two boxing superstars, Pacquiao and Mayweather, creating a big illusion that all boxers outearn all the top MMA fighters today?

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