Likely payouts revealed for Nick and Nate Diaz, 47 other WMMA champs and UFC stars

In Part 3 of our deep dive into lawsuit documents, the most likely payouts for 49 more UFC stars have been revealed, including three PPV draws, female champions, and their most tenured fighters.

As Bloody Elbow continues to take a deep dive into the “Internal Zuffa Bout Compensation” list that was unsealed from the UFC lawsuit, several more likely payouts have likely been revealed.

In Part 1, we uncovered the biggest payouts from several of the UFC’s biggest draws such as Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey and Jon Jones. In Part 2, we were able to determine possible payouts for 33 more former UFC champions.

In this latest edition, we were able to unveil the most likely payouts for almost 50 fighters, including women’s champions and dozens of other UFC stars that never won the belt.

How did we figure out the likely payouts of all these UFC fighters?

As noted earlier, an appendix from the unsealed Roger D. Blair’s expert report had an “Internal Zuffa Bout Compensation” that listed the payouts to every UFC fighter from 2011 to 2016.

Individual fighter names weren’t listed, but the report does include how many bouts that fighter has had in the UFC at that point, along with how many fighters received such a payout.

Combining that with information from disclosed purses from lawsuits, athletic commissions, along with confirmation from several fighters on background, we were able to parse through the sheet and make a fairly educated guess to identify the most likely purses for dozens of UFC stars.

It’s worth noting again that while many of the biggest totals match our other sources, there could always be inaccuracies and human error involved in these — such as Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s most likely payout for her seventh fight being listed as her fourth on the sheet.

As a side note: Most of the discrepancies seem to be with the women’s strawweight division. That may be the result of the TUF season in 2014, were 12 women were supposedly paid the equivalent of two purses for competing. These additional payouts seems to have been included in the total number of bout compensations for that year, as the Internal Zuffa Bout Compensation includes more bouts in 2014 than were actually fought.

That being said, here’s what we found after doing a deeper dive into the document.

Headliner bonuses

Most of the headliners of Fight Night events we’ve seen on this payout sheet seem to have received a $25,000 bonus.

Lowest UFC payouts

2011: $4,000 - One fighter on their third UFC fight received the lowest payout on the entire list. Three debuting fighters in 2011 got paid $6,000. Most common pay for debutants was for the 21 that got $9,000. It’s worth noting that Dustin Poirier came from the WEC and debuted in 2011 on a $4000/$4000 contract.

2012: $6,000 - One debuting fighter, and two on their second UFC fight received this amount in 2012. Three other debuting fighters that year got $8,000. Most common pay for debutants were the 17 that got $9,000.

2013: $8,000 - Four debuting fighters, and two on their second UFC fight got this amount in 2013. 30 debutants got $11,000.

2014: $8,000 - Four debuting fighters got this amount in 2014. 90 Debutants got $11,000.

2015: $6,400 - One fighter on his second UFC fight got this amount. Four fighters debuted on $8,000, and 15 debuted on $10,000.

2016: $10,000 for five debutants, and two on their second UFC fight. 21 fighters received $12,000 on their UFC debut.

While $10,000 was the minimum declared in commissions for years (and eventually bumped up to $12,000) in the sheet we’d see that majority of the debutants earned a little over that. For example, 90 debutants in 2014 got $11,000, and only a few got the minimum $10,000 for losses or $20,000 for wins. This would likely indicate that most of the new fighters at the time, even those that lost, got varying discretionary bonuses of at least $1000.

In 2023, common minimum purses for debutants are $10,000, for the dozens of Contender Series signings. UFC signed 45 fighters from the 49 bouts on the latest DWCS season alone.

Highest UFC payouts

2011: $4,314,289 for Georges St-Pierre

2012: $3,197,908 for Georges St-Pierre

2013: $4,374,326 for Anderson Silva

2014: $1,237,880 for Jon Jones

2015: $4.54M and $4.48M, for Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey.

2016: $8,000,000 for Brock Lesnar

Share of compensation

Splitting the 5004 payouts into five equal parts or quintiles, we see that the top 20% get 76.2% of the total fighter compensation, while the rest of the field split the remaining 23.8% of the money.

The middle quintile averaged just under $30,000, which is close to the median pay for the class period. The bottom two quintiles, or 40% of the total payouts, had fighters receiving less than $24,000.

Bottom Quintile

Total: $11,687,150

Min: $4,000

Max: $15,000

Average: $11,675

2nd Quintile

Total: $19,450,800

Min: 15,000

Max: $24,000

Average: $19,431

Middle Quintile

Total: $29,995,700

Min: $24,000

Max: $40,000

Average: $29,996

4th Quintile

Total: $58,865,150

Min: $40,000

Max: $82,200

Average: $58,806

Top Quintile

Total: $383,589,799

Min: $82,500

Max: $8,000,000

Average: $383,207

UFC payouts for former WMMA champs

Bloody Elbow has uncovered payouts for 49 more UFC fighters from Zuffa’s internal sheet, but we were only able to determine a few from the female UFC champions. Outside of Ronda Rousey and a couple of exceptions, most of them didn’t really have high enough purses at the time and were hard to distinguish from the rest of the field.

Amanda Nunes

$150,000 or $245,000 vs. Miesha Tate — Disclosed Purse: $150,000 (100K+50K bonus)

$1,837,354 vs. Ronda Rousey — Disclosed Purse: $250,000 (100K/100K+50K)

Miesha Tate

$453,000 vs. Ronda Rousey 2 — Disclosed Purse: $28,000

$2,048,343 vs. Amanda Nunes — Disclosed Purse: $500,000

Notes:

Tate had PPV cut as champion, and payout for Nunes fight benefited from being in UFC 200.

Holly Holm

$1,100,000 vs. Ronda Rousey

$2,986,830 vs. Miesha Tate — Disclosed Purse: $500,000

Notes:

Tate fight was part of McGregor vs. Diaz card.

Joanna Jedrzejczyk

$2,296,484 vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz

Notes:

Seems to be a numbering issue on the sheet, counting this total as the fourth fight in 2016, when it should’ve been Joanna’s 7th. She got a PPV cut and was part of the UFC 205 event with Conor McGregor vs. Eddie Alvarez headlining.

PPV draws like the Diaz brothers, Sonnen had contrasting deals

It’s typically UFC champions that get a cut of the PPV, but these three PPV draws all got very different deals and paths to those big events. Nick Diaz came in as a Strikeforce champion, Nate Diaz had to enter TUF and grind for years before getting PPV points very late in his career, while Chael Sonnen only got a flat fee.

Nate Diaz

$125,000 or $180,000 vs. Gray Maynard — Disclosed Purse: $80,000 (15K/15K+50K bonus)

$56,000 vs. Rafael dos Anjos — Disclosed Purse: $16,000

$2,838,158 vs. Conor McGregor 1 - Disclosed Purse: $550,000 (500k+50K bonus)

$4,315,490 vs. Conor McGregor 2 — Disclosed Purse: $2,050,000 (2M+50K bonus)

Notes:

The biggest purses are much easier to determine on the sheet, but we only have these few figures for Nate Diaz, because he sadly didn’t really get paid much before that. Very few people go past 20 UFC fights, but for his 21st bout, Diaz was still on a publicly reported $20,000/$20,000 contract.

Sources told Bloody Elbow that Diaz also had a LOA, or Letter of Agreement, that paid an additional $40,000 that was not disclosed to the athletic commission or public.

Nick Diaz

$275,000 vs. BJ Penn — Disclosed Purse: $275,000 (200K+75K bonus)

$500,000 vs. Carlos Condit — Disclosed Purse: $200,000

$1,244,460 vs. Georges St-Pierre

$956,184 vs. Anderson Silva — Disclosed Purse: $500,000

Chael Sonnen

$1,050,000 vs. Anderson Silva 2 — Disclosed Purse: $50,000

$1,050,000 vs. Jon Jones

$400,000 vs. Shogun Rua — Disclosed Purse: $150,000 (100K + 50K bonus)

Notes:

Sonnen supposedly received a $1 million discretionary bonus for both of his big PPV fights in this class period against Silva and Jones.

Sonnen has been trying hard to defend UFC pay, and his recent efforts included making dubious claims and inflating the non-disclosed bonuses that he got from the promotion. He claimed to have earned $8,800,000 in the rematch against Anderson Silva, when in reality, lawsuit documents showed that Silva got just $2.5 million while Sonnen got $1.05 million — over eight times less than his claim.

Some Strikeforce and PRIDE stars got (relatively) bigger pay