UFC On FOX: Blue Collar Brawlers. Mike Russow & The Silent Face Of UFC Fighter Pay Inequity

The UFC on FOX open workouts were held on Wednesday and Ariel Helwani was back in top form with his extended length pre-fight interviews. Helwani's interviews are right up there with Dallas Winston's fight dissections in terms of the best fight week coverage on the web and if I had to pick just one media offering to consume before a fight card, it would probably be the Helwani interviews. The upcoming FOX card features some great personalities and the highlights of the interviews include Chael Sonnen revealing his dislike for Inside MMA host Kenny Rice and Rashad Evans getting a kick out of learning that both he and long time rival Rampage Jackson have similar feelings towards Ariel Helwani and his flashy shoes.

The best interview, however; was with a fighter that many people know for his involvement in one of the most absurd knockouts in MMA history, Mike Russow. I'm not going to rehash that here but if you don't know what I'm referring to, spend a few minutes on Google and search for "Hammerfist of Doom". It's well worth it. In the interview, Russow and Helwani discuss the difficulties that Russow faces trying to balance MMA with his full time job as a Chicago police officer.

Helwani: How do you juggle a full time job as a police officer and a UFC career?

Russow: I mean, it's tough, you just have to be dedicated. You only have so much time. I work 5 pm to 2 am. I get home, go right to bed. Wake up, eat, and then go train. Usually get home around 3 or so, maybe have 45 minutes to an hour to rest and then off to work. It's like Groundhog day. Do it all over again the next day.

Helwani: Have you ever thought about dropping one, so that you could focus on one as opposed to the other, 100%?

Russow: I mean, my dream is just to fight for the UFC, just fight year round. That's my dream, but realistically, I just got married a little over a year ago, I have a baby daughter, she's a year and a half. With health insurance and you know, being Chicago Police, we make pretty good money and I'm 35, so to take that chance and put my family out there, you know, is just not something I want to do at this point. If things worked out in the UFC and I could move up, I think I could take a year leave of absence and give it a shot. For this fight, I used all of my vacation time, this is the first time ever leading up to a fight that I've been able to have a month off, just train right, sleep right, and just kinda do it like the pro's do it. And it's awesome.

I felt a mix of emotions as I listenend to him describe his situation. The first was admiration for Russow. Trying to balance a full time job with a dream is a difficult proposition for anyone. Add a young family to the mix and the dream often retreats back to whence it came, no longer a part of everyday reality. For Russow, the stakes are even higher, as both his job as a police officer and his dream of being a full time mixed martial artist put him at substantial risk of physical harm. The sacrifices he makes on a daily basis are truly something to applaud.

The second emotion I felt was disappointment, brought on by Russow's assertion that "if things worked out in the UFC...." You see, in my estimation, things have worked out for him in the UFC. He's won his first three fights in the organization. He's fought on the main card, won knockout of the night. He's on a three fight win streak, joining Junior Dos Santos and Frank Mir as the only UFC heavyweights who can currently make that claim. He is ranked among the top 20 heavyweight fighters in the world, yet he refers to his peers as professionals, not comfortable putting himself in the same category as them.

Continue reading this post after the jump.

The recent ESPN/Outside the Lines story on UFC fighter pay made reference to the fact that ESPN spoke with a good number of UFC fighters who refused to go on the record and speak out in favor of higher pay, for fear of being black balled by the UFC brass. It's not hard to understand that, as Zuffa has not always taken criticism well. However, might the type of men attracted to the job have something to do with it as well? The term "blue collar work ethic" is often used to describe the hard working everyman. Up early, home late and never a complaint about it. Russow clearly embodies this attitude; fighters generally do (Nick Diaz not withstanding). When you consider that aspect, is it any wonder then that UFC fighters are reticent to speak out? Blue collar jobs almost always come with the support of a union, in place to provide a voice for men who prefer to let their actions speak for them, ensuring their hard working nature is not taken advantage of. There is no fighter's union nor is there likely to be one anytime soon. Thus the Mike Russow's of the organization quietly soldier on, happy just to have the chance to be there.

In some ways, fighters like Russow are destined to be a semi-tragic part of MMA history, a generation caught in between, if you will. Old enough to have seen the days when MMA was truly an underground phenomenon and everyone fought out of love for the sport but not young enough to truly profit from the explosion into the mainstream. Joining Mike Russow on the card is Phil Davis who, like Russow, is a former division one NCAA wrestler but who, unlike Russow, entered MMA straight upon his graduation from Penn State University, made his UFC a mere 18 months later and now, just two years into his career, finds himself headlining an event on a major television network. It was kind of amusing to hear Davis tell Ariel Helwani that it would be "silly to think that anyone would be fighting if they weren't getting paid for it" but that is pretty much exactly what was happening (in the North American MMA scene at least) until Zuffa stepped in some ten odd years ago.

In the full length, unedited interview that Lorenzo Fertitta did with ESPN, released by the UFC following the OTL story, Lorenzo went to great lengths to detail the financial risks that he and his brother Frank undertook in building the company. He noted that fighter pay has increased every year since they began making a profit and was adamant that the UFC provides a one-of-a-kind opportunity to fighters to make loads of money. I can't and won't deny the validity of his statements, nor would I minimize them. Zuffa has single handedly turned MMA into what it is today, a bonafide, major, professional sport. The work is not quite finished though. The UFC also released their own video piece on the subject of fighter pay, featuring former champions Forrest Griffin, Chuck Liddell and Matt Serra discussing the issue. Something Forrest said stood out to me:

Forrest Griffin: The UFC has guys that technically they lose money on. Guys that they are paying ten, fifteen thousand dollars to fight, that nobody is really watching. Nobody bought the pay-per-view to see that guy. You know, maybe 300 people, his home town, if he's lucky. But they are paying that guy to get better, to keep fighting, because maybe he'll catch on, and be that next thing. So what the UFC is really doing is paying a stable of fighters and giving them an opportunity to make it big.

Forrest makes a great point, that no one is really buying the pay-per-view to see someone like Mike Russow. His next point? Not quite as great. If they are truly paying Russow and the rest of the guys they "lose money" on, (I use quotations because what they lose on the under card and mid tier fighters they more than gain back on the portion of the pay-per-view proceeds that they aren't giving directly to the stars, like Forrest. It might have been more accurate for Forrest to say "I'm losing money because the UFC is paying these guys".) to get better, they should be ensuring that they can do so without also having to work full time as a police officer, or engineer (Shane Carwin), or stock broker (John Cholish). It's completely unrealistic to think that any professional athlete is going to improve much if they are spending eight hours a day doing something completely unrelated to their sport.

In my eyes the solution is simple: When the UFC signs a new fighter to a contract, they should give them a signing bonus right away. Nothing too big, but enough so that the fighter can set aside whatever else they are doing with their lives and focus on training full time. A pre-fight camp training camp usually starts 8-12 weeks prior to the fight. If the contract is for a single fight, the bonus should be roughly equal to the cost of three months of training. If the contract is for multiple fights, it should be a little bigger. Once they have gotten to that first fight, the current amount of show/win money, the fight night and discretionary bonus system and the various sponsorship opportunities available to fighters will take care of the rest.

My caveman economics are leading me to imagine that $15,000 for a one fight contract, $25,000 for a multiple fight contract would be about right. I'm not sure how many lower tier fighters the UFC signs in a calender year, but 50 guys at $25k a piece would cost the UFC $1.25 million, or just over one percent of the money they are getting per year from FOX. Per fighter the amount is a veritable drop in the bucket for Zuffa, a negligible difference to their bottom line.

For Mike Russow and the many fighters like him though? It would mean all the difference in the world.