Justin Gaethje has fought in his fair share of main events during his career, but “The Highlight” has an interesting idea on how his pay scale should be tweaked accordingly.
Gaethje is set to face Edson Barboza tonight, in what will serve as the headliner of UFC Philadelphia. Since the former WSOF champ moved to the UFC in 2017, Gaethje has fought in three main events (against Michael Johnson, Dustin Poirier and James Vick). In other words, the UFC has made the most of Gaethje and his ridiculously entertaining style, since joining the company…not surprisingly.
Well, in advance of his latest headlining spot, Gaethje relayed the following idea about how he should be compensated for main event bouts (quotes via MMA Junkie).
“If I’m getting paid something for three rounds, it’s easy to do the math,” said Gaethje. “If I’m getting paid $100,000 (to show) and $100,000 (to win), that’s like $33,000 a round if I lose, $66,000 a round if I win. So I’d like to get paid ($132,000) more to fight for two extra rounds.”
It’s an interesting idea, and in terms of being compensated for your labor, you can understand why Gaethje feels this way. Detractors, however, would likely argue that fighters would be incentivized to not finish fights and to go the full, 25 minutes instead.
That aside, Gaethje has reportedly asked the UFC for even more money for his main event bookings, but that they didn’t agree.
“I’m here to fight,” he said. “I’m not worried about the business. You can’t worry about the business this close to a fight. There’s only a certain amount of things I can control leading into this fight, and I will not spend an ounce of energy thinking about the other things that I can’t.”
Compensation aside, will we see a five round war tonight at UFC Philadelphia? Or a shorter, violent fight? Gaethje is coming off a quick, KO win over James Vick, after dropping back-to-back bouts to Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Poirier. Both those fights went into the third and fourth rounds respectively.
Barboza, meanwhile, took out Dan Hooker in the third round in his last outing. In his two bouts prior, the vaunted striker was stopped by Kevin Lee in round five, and he dropped a three round, decision loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov.
UFC Philadelphia will be hosted by the Wells Fargo Center.
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