Jake Paul and NBA analyst Stephen A Smith get into a fierce debate about fighter pay in the UFC and Dana White
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Paul and Smith got into an intense argument about the state of fighter pay
Jake Paul and Stephen A Smith were engaged in fiery debate over fighter pay and Dana White’s hold over the UFC recently. The ESPN Broadcast team’s star made an appearance on Paul’s new sports talk show in partnership with the betting platform, Betr.
While they happily argued for the first half of the show over many things including their NBA season predictions, athletes smoking marijuana and Paul’s own upcoming fight, things got heated once the debate shifted on to the realm of fighter pay. Smith started the talk by praising Dana White for reducing the bureaucracy in combat sports.
Calling himself a boxing fan in his youth, Smith said that he’d be turned away from the sport due to a promoters ability to hold a talent hostage, arguing that White took out this flaw from combat sports.
“The bottomline is, when you think about what it takes to run a sport, when you listen to owners in basketball and football and baseball, the people I’ve run across in my nearly 3 decades of covering sport, you hear them talk about what comes into play”, said Smith as he explained his point of view, he continued, ” At the end of the day you need to give the fans what they want to see, Dana White is somebody to me that’s always said, ‘Hey this is what the fans want and that’s what I’m gonna give it to them’ and that’s all he owes us”
The former YouTuber was quick to refute this statement. Paul claimed a recent example where White failed to give the fans what they wanted, touting the superfight between Jon Jones and Francis Ngannou to be an example. When Smith argued that the fight did not happen because of Jones wanting time to build muscles, Paul said the fight did not happen due to monetary issues.
“Dana doesn’t want to pay them the 10 million dollars each for what would be one of the biggest fights in UFC history, he refuses to pay them 10 million dollars each, which is what they’re asking, “ said Paul adding a strong base for his argument.
Stephen A Smith refutes Jake Paul’s claim of 50-50 revenue split in the NBA
Paul then went on to argue about the intricacies of a UFC Contract and how one can be bound to it longer than they expect if they were to rise up the ranks. He argued that athletes in general were very vulnerable to being taken advantage of during the younger days of their career, with him citing Basketball Legend, Scottie Pippen as an example.
During the argument, Jake made a statement comparing the revenue split in other major leaves like the NBA and NFL, claiming the players were entitled to almost 50% of total revenue. Stephen A, was quick to correct Paul on this claim.
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“Number one, I’m not going to question what you know, I don’t know what you know, and I’ll tell you that, me, the reporters that I’ve spoken to that cover the sport, I’ve never heard that before”, argued Smith as went on to refute Paul’s claims.
While it is true the NBA guidelines do advocate for a fair split of revenue among owners and athletes, it’s unfair to assume that most of an athlete’s earnings come from sports alone. Many of these major league athletes have multiple brand deals that quite often amount to more than their actual playing salary.
Also Read: The UFC’s latest lucrative Project Rock sponsorship will pay nothing to the fighters
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Jerin Mathew
(713 Articles Published)