James Toney & The UFC: Half a Million for Half a Round?!?

James Toney’s True UFC Legacy

OK, Toney went a little over three minutes. So what? We all knew it was all over when Couture snagged that wrestling-101 low single-leg. $500,000 for three minutes and 19 seconds of writhing, choking and tapping in Randy Couture’s expert clutches. That’s basically $6000 and change per second. Toney merely had to show up.

Prior to UFC 118, Dana White chuckled like a benevolent mafia don humoring a neighborhood kid with a job sweeping floors: James Toney, apparently, chased him all over the country demanding a fight. All right, little fella, smiled Dana - I’ll let you make your mixed-martial-arts/main-card-of-a-pay-per-view/UFC-heavyweight debut against one of the top-five biggest names in the promotion. Granted, he’s a geezer just like you. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Or isn’t it? A lot of people are calling horse hockey on the matter. Why should he get paid a hundred grand more than any other UFC fighter currently on the promotion’s docket?

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Questionable Bonuses, Questionable Payouts

Bonuses and payouts might sometimes seem a little odd or anemic at first glance. Fight of the night at UFC 118 to Diaz and Davis? I thought Osipczak versus Soto was a better fight. It had everything: big punches, good exchanges, submission attempts and defence, ground-and-pound, a see-saw delivery and a big finish. However, it’s easy to justify where the FOTN bonus money goes. It goes to whomever Dana White felt put on the best show on the card. It’s subjective, and he’s the president. If the bonuses were objective (based solely on buy rates, e.g.) they would remain undisclosed. Bonuses based on subjectivity show a true appreciation for the sport: Dana White says, this fight was f***ing incredible, so those dudes get a second paycheque. That’s cool in my books.

As for the seemingly slight payouts that go to newer fighters appearing on the prelim fights or the free shows (starting at $3000 and up), I don’t see what the fuss is about. The sliding scale for MMA payouts rises so rapidly it’s stupidly easy to see that Dana Warbucks shells out the big bucks for results. New fighters on their way up should fight to be seen: take Stefan Struve’s spectacular Knockout of the Night over Chase Gormley, after Gormley fed him porridge for five minutes straight in round one. Struve’s original $15,000 was doubled by a $15,000 win bonus, and original payout was quadrupled by a $60,000 knockout of the night bonus. In other words, Struve made $75,000 because he won with an amazing knockout. Show me a UFC fighter who doesn’t get paid much, and I’ll show you a fighter who fights a little too safe.

500 Large to the Fat Guy Who Got Choked Out (not Tank Abbott)

But I repeat: what is up with that cool half million awarded to the short fat dude who didn’t do anything? And I don’t mean Gabe Ruediger – he came out lean, although he didn’t accomplish anything, either.

Bear in mind two caveats. The UFC only publishes two payments: the base agreement, or the “showing up” money, and the official bonuses. Percentages of gate and pay-per-view buys, unpublished bonuses, even merchandise are all possible means of extending the base salary of UFC fighters but the public is not privy to this information. Second, Japanese promotions and the now-defunct Affliction and Elite XC reportedly paid exorbitant fees to some of their athletes (Arlovski made a whopping $1.5 million in his loss to Fedor Emelianenko), but note that they are no longer in business. The UFC has established a norm for paying MMA athletes which other fledgling American promotions, like Strikeforce and Bellator, seem to be mimicking, as they publish their own payouts and it is rare that a fighter other than the biggest names (Robbie Lawlor, Nick Diaz, Dan Henderson) break the six-figure barrier. In other words, there are fighters whose gross yet undisclosed purse might have surpassed Toney’s published paycheque.

Bear in mind as well, fighters like Chuck Liddell or Rich Franklin have been fighting for years, all the while raking in six-figure paycheques. Toney was released after a single loss.

So how much do the UFC’s biggest names make, by contrast? Couture makes $250,000 per fight. Matt Hughes, perennial welterweight showpiece, makes $200,000. Brock Lesnar, on the other hand, makes $400,000 a fight, alongside Georges St. Pierre who makes the same as the monstrous former pro wrestler. Bear in mind, GSP has a deal with Gatorade and is the UFC’s poster-boy nice guy to Lesnar’s villain. Granted, there are not a lot of mainstream sponsorships within the UFC’s roster, yet. Clay Guida should look into some “Head and Shoulders” scratch. Will we ever see a UFC fighter on a Wheaties box? Never mind. It is no coincidence that Lesnar makes almost the same per fight as Toney did for one.

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New Blood for Big Bucks?

The last fighter to make anywhere remotely close to $500,000 in his MMA debut, or close thereto, was Lesnar (Lesnar was paid $250,000 in his debut, a loss against Frank Mir at UFC 81). Lesnar is a walking freakshow, no doubt – he’s a classic wrestling villain who looks like a comic book drawing. But he fights the best and wins, so in the end, he has become a very, very lucrative experiment for the UFC. Pro wrestling is a ginormous market with a fairly similar demographic to MMA. Other than Toney and Lesnar, the only remaining – and it’s debatable – freakshow in the UFC was Kimbo Slice, currently chilling on a pile of bling thanks to Zuffa’s slick exploitation of his youtube fame. They legitimized his backyard brawler persona by forcing him to come up through the ranks via The Ultimate Fighter, helping to revive the franchise while he was at it. Not only that, they rescued him from the foundering Elite XC promotion. So he’s not a total freakshow.

During that same season, a number of former NFL players made their way into the UFC. Brandon Schaub, Matt Mitrione, and Marcus Jones all made it into the promotion after weathering “the house” following a football career.

Don’t forget about Herschel Walker, who was recently signed by Strikeforce.

Is there a trend starting here? Is MMA now to pro athletes (whether boxers, wrestlers or football players) what TV is to a waning Hollywood career? A guaranteed paycheque, newfound fame? Half a million dollars, for some lucky fellas?

Not really. Other athletes making their way in the promotion are not making big bucks, relatively speaking. Brendan Schaub is 2-1 in the UFC so far, and signed to fight Chris Tuchscherer for $20 000. As said, the UFC has also declined big names when it suited them. Other cross-promoting athletes are not raking in the kind of cash that went to Toney – and obviously they don’t have the incredible boxing career, numerous belts and massive payouts Toney enjoyed when he was in his heyday. That’s not even mentioning boxing management or agencies, who obviously were one of the biggest reasons Toney (and Lesnar) were able to leverage so much cash to be nothing more than a flash in the pan. Boxing and wrestling are massive industries, far bigger than the UFC, and it only makes sense that these guys cost so much. It’s a worthwhile gamble, even when it flops.

And flop is relative – Toney only “flopped” in the sense that his name, face and trash-talk wasn’t able to garner anywhere near the revenue that Lesnar can, but the UFC still came out way, way, way in the black. Wait, no – Toney also flopped when Couture clasped his ankle.

We don’t know how much Kimbo Slice made in his loss to Matt Mitrione, because the UFC 113 payouts were never published (the event was held in Montreal, and the Quebec athletic commission does not require publication of fighter payment). We do know that he was cut after a single loss. The UFC could have continued to capitalize on the enigma that is Kevin Ferguson, but they didn’t. Toney seems to be an exception within the UFC, then, but that could be nothing more than the fact that even has-beens like Kevin Spacey can still pull in the big bucks. You pay for the name, not the performance at certain levels. When it doesn’t work, those big names get cut. No embarrassment there, frankly.

Other than the numerous rekindlings of Frank Shamrock’s career and the ludicrous “rivalry” between him and Tito Ortiz (one might say the same thing about the numerous revivals of Ortiz’s career), and perhaps the over-extension of Chuck Liddell’s career – always a pay-per-view magnet – the UFC is not really in the business of smoke and mirrors, or in the realm of P.T. Barnum, yet. They didn’t scramble to sign Bobby Lashley, another pro wrestler looking to make it big punching people in the face, or Jose Canseco, who had to go all the way to Japan to test his talent in MMA. The best way to predict a trend, however, is to look at the numbers. In UFC-parlance, that means dollars.

The True Toney Legacy

The true legacy of Toney versus Couture is that not a lot of people cared and it's doubtful that we will see a famous boxer in the cage again. James Toney’s paycheque was cut largely on his career, name and status, and probably a little on the hope of a big pay-per-view audience. That didn’t happen. UFC 118 raked in a nothing-to-write-home-about-but-not-bad-enough-to-pout-over 570,000 pay per view buys, and a decent gate of a little over 14,000. The last card to see numbers like that was UFC 115; granted, UFC 117 didn’t do much better than 600-large (probably due to Anderson Silva’s UFC 112 debacle and the fact that he headlined a card five events later). UFC 116 (headlined by Shane Carwin versus Brock Lesnar) was estimated to surpass 1.2 million, by contrast. Sometimes that big name works, sometimes it doesn’t. Bear in mind that compared to 2008, these are all fantastic numbers. Brock Lesnar’s debut boasted 600,000 buys in a year typified by PPV buyrates in the quarter-million zone.

Basically, Toney was a fizzled experiment. Not failed – 500,000 or so pay-per-views still adds up to more than $25,000,000 (of which the UFC certainly takes the lion’s share). Half a million is a magical number.

Granted, naturally, Randy Couture, Frankie Edgar and BJ Penn share the blame for the relative low buyrate. UFC 112 made sick profit, and both champions (Edgar and Anderson Silva) to come out of that massively-hyped, utterly deflating spectacle headed the last two fight cards garnering barely over a million pay-per-view buys between them. No surprise there. Most die hard fans probably guessed that the Penn-Edgar rematch would be a snoozer similar to the first fight, and it was. Couture’s mild manner and all-smiles approach didn’t help sell the only angle the UFC thought to push (MMA versus...yawn...boxing). So let’s concede the point: it wasn’t the card of the century.

But the experiment still fizzled. The UFC cashed in because that’s what they do now, every card makes them a lot of money. Nevertheless, both headliners were anticlimactic. Less so was Couture versus Toney, because it happened exactly as it was supposed to. We all hoped for something amazing, even ludicrous, but Couture played it safe. Couture is the only person to come out looking a tad too smug, as his victory is meaningless. Toney is out of the UFC and Couture clearly took a side step in his career after defeating Brandon Vera in a close decision (but he still gets to chalk up a “W” on his record).

Moreover, Toney probably assassinated any future options for any other big names in boxing, mainly because he looked like such a tool in the cage. The look of mild confusion on his face as he clumsily tapped out was probably due to the pending decision of what color Maserati should he get. But this is a good thing. We don’t want any more retired boxers bleeding excess cash from the sport and embarrassing themselves in the ring. That’s not to say other fighters got paid less because Toney got paid so much, though.

Still, why would Zuffa risk throwing away that coin a second time, when they put to bed the utterly pointless “debate” of which brand of putting people to sleep in an violent and entertaining way is better than the other? In the end, only half a million people really cared, and of the $50 or so they shelled out, about a dollar apiece went into Toney’s pocket. In the grand scheme of things, it’s peanuts.

Essentially, the fight was an experiment in branding: can a famous, retired boxer make a splash in the UFC? The answer is: Toney was a phoney but in the end, no one lost, except, vaguely, the UFC’s credibility, but even that wasn’t hurt that much. It only cost half a million to pay Toney to make 25 million more for half a million people to witness the inevitable.

By Roy Kok
ProFighting-fans.com MMA Staff Writer