Unbeaten Cain Velasquez could be fitted with the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s heavyweight belt Saturday night in Anaheim, Calif., and yet in a rematch would still get less money.
That’s how big Brock Lesnar has become.
“He’s a dominant champion, has looked invincible at times and showed huge heart in his last fight,” UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta said of Lesnar, a former NCAA wrestling champion and World Wrestling Entertainment pay-per-view star.
So after making nearly 10 times more than his last two challengers, Lesnar has achieved a popularity few pro fighters attain. Even if he loses, he’ll still win the battle of bank deposits.
Less than a 2-to-1 underdog in Las Vegas sports books, Velasquez, 28, already has accepted his fate: “He’s the most recognizable guy in the UFC,” he says of Lesnar.
In boxing, tradition has been that a challenger who upsets a champion wins the leverage to be the top earner in any rematch. It happened years ago when Olympian Leon Spinks upset Muhammad Ali, and more recently between middleweights Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor and junior-middleweights Winky Wright and Shane Mosley.
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A champion’s extreme popularity can alter that tradition, though. When Oscar De La Hoya lost to Shane Mosley in 2000, De La Hoya still outearned Mosley in their rematch three years later – $9.5 million to $1.5 million.
Such disparity, however, is typically reserved for the poster children of combat sports or the result of a take-it-or-leave-it rematch clause.
Lesnar, 33, downplayed the suggestion he has passed welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre and middleweight champion Anderson Silva as the face of the UFC.
“I’m a former amateur wrestler, a former professional wrestler, a wannabe NFL football player,” Lesnar said. “And here I am a UFC heavyweight champion. So, do I look at it any differently? No. Do I go to bed holding onto my UFC title every night? No.”
UFC accountants undoubtedly sleep better knowing Lesnar (5-1) has recovered from an intestinal infection that threatened to end his career. This will be his second fight in four months. In July, Lesnar rallied from a first-round beating by Shane Carwin to win his comeback fight by second-round submission.
Lesnar’s three fights in Las Vegas since 2008 are among the seven richest gates in the sport’s history in Nevada, generating nearly $14 million, with more than 2 million pay-per-view buys at about $50 a pop.
“People love the heavyweight champ, he’s the baddest man on the planet,” UFC President Dana White said. “Boxing’s heavyweight champ is not that. The Klitschkos are the cure for insomnia. Brock is the exact opposite of a Klitschko. He wants to go down as the best heavyweight of all time, and if he can continue his dominance in this fight, he’s on his way to doing it.”
White and Fertitta say boxing’s formula to overpay surprise winners is flawed because it creates difficult negotiations that may block a bout.
Boxing promoter Richard Schaefer scoffed that “If the pay-per-view numbers I see on them are accurate,” the UFC “model is all about empowering the UFC, at the cost of the athletes. They are grossly underpaying their fighters compared to boxers.”
Lesnar’s guaranteed purses in his last two fights haven’t topped $1 million, while boxing star Floyd Mayweather Jr. has earned more than $60 million (with pay-per-view profits counted) in his last two bouts.
Lou DiBella, another boxing promoter, said the UFC pay system works only because “they’re a de facto monopoly. They control their industry. In boxing, it’s every man for himself fighting for a piece of pie that keeps shrinking.”
White admits his organization’s dominance creates hard feelings – for rivals, and sometimes among his fighters.
“Too bad, it’s a … business,” he said. “Everyone thinks they should get more.”