Justin Gaethje had an interesting fight week leading up to his interim lightweight title fight at UFC 324. Despite claims by the UFC and various UFC employees that fighters were getting their contracts tuned up in the Paramount+ era to account for disappearing PPV bonuses, “The Highlight” claimed he wasn’t making a dollar more than he was before. He even castigated commentator Daniel Cormier for ‘lying.’
“You’re out here saying everybody’s getting paid more and you’re f—king lying,” Gaethje told Cormier. “Why would you say that? Why would you talk out of your ass when you have no idea what’s happening?”
UFC CEO Dana White countered Gaethje’s claims by saying they did offer the fighter more money leading into UFC 324, and Gaethje never responded to their offer. Now we have Gaethje’s manager Ali Abdelaziz clearing the air with MMA Junkie on what happened.
“Listen, I have rules. I don’t talk about financial business,” Abdelaziz began before dishing on this financial business. ” Dana was right, an offer was made. It was made. But sometime … a little bit more money? Dana was not lying. But in reality, Justin, maybe he was not okay with the offer. But everything worked out correctly. Justin is good. Now we need to talk.”
That makes sense: an offer was made, it was insultingly low, and Gaethje decided to roll the dice and renegotiate after he won the interim lightweight belt. Now the champ is in a much better position to get a solid pay bump, especially after UFC 324 did such great numbers for Paramount+.
“But in a way, I always say for athletes, everyone have feelings, we’re all men, we all have testosterone,” Abdelaziz continued. “And Justin is emotional. And he speak. Justin’s not lying. I think nobody in the UFC deserves to make more money than Justin Gaethje. I don’t give a s–t. Nobody. In the hall of fame, he should be the first one. He make money, he should be the first one.”
“If you think you’re worth money, and you want to talk about it, we can talk about it behind closed doors. I think nobody wins when you talk about money publicly. But also fight week, emotion, and listen: Dana came out and said he doubled the bonus. And I think this is something — I don’t think this is something Justin Gaethje said, I think it was pre-planned. But now everyone gets $100,000, not $50,000.”
“Justin Gaethje loves to be a UFC fighter, loves to compete,” he concluded. “There’s no beef. No beef between UFC and Justin Gaethje. Justin Gaethje is like every other athlete in the world: he want to be paid a lot, a lot, a lot of money. And if anyone deserves it, it’s him.”
Gaethje does deserve more money, and it’s sad that a guy the UFC regularly promotes as the most exciting fighter in the promotion has to engage in this kind of hardball negotiating to get what he deserves, while at the same time headlining the first card of the new $7.7 billion Paramount+ era. Pay this man what he’s worth, UFC!
