Since retiring from UFC, Matt Brown has put a lot of time into building businesses — most notably his gym — and setting himself up for success in a post-fighting career.
While he never headlined pay-per-views or won championships, Brown spent 16 years in the UFC, and during that time he learned a lot about how the promotion does business. It’s thanks largely to that experience that the now 43-year-old former fighter believes the conversation about fighter pay is much more nuanced than simply saying UFC should be paying athletes more money.
On the surface, Brown agrees that everybody on the UFC roster is underpaid compared to the vast amounts of revenue the organization is generating. But the cause and effect of why that’s happening goes much further than simply stating that UFC needs to pay more.
“It’s hard to expect the UFC to just be completely fair about it,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “They’re running a business, and they run it very f*cking well. They’ve done an amazing job building their business. I think 99 percent of people in their shoes would be doing very similar to what they’re doing.
“Does that make it right? That’s up to each person to decide on their own. I think it’s just way more complex than people give it credit for.”
As much as the responsibility always falls back on UFC’s shoulders for underpaying athletes, Brown says anybody complaining about fighter pay can’t expect business owners to do anything differently than attempt to maximize profits for their businesses. But Brown also knows some of the blame rests with the fighters themselves for not holding UFC to account over the years — and he’s pointing the finger right at himself as part of the problem.
“If anybody is to blame for fighter pay, it’s the fighters — and I’m one of them, at least formerly,” Brown said. “I never fought against the UFC about my pay. You’ve seen on Instagram, Twitter, different interviews where the fighters stick up for the UFC.
“I’ve never heard of a business in my life where the employees — if you want to call us employees or even subcontractors — where they’re going to say, ‘I shouldn’t be paid more, they’re paying me a perfect amount of money.’ That is so unbelievable to me.”
In the past, Brown acknowledged that his only real complaint about pay came down to an in-person meeting with UFC CEO Dana White where he expressed his concerns. There was no real argument or negotiation because Brown says White agreed with his argument and the two sides reached a new deal without any further discussion.
That said, Brown never really complained about his pay with UFC because he essentially understood that arguing probably wouldn’t get him anywhere good.
“Look, I’ve always been happy with how the UFC’s treated me, I like them,” Brown said. “There’s no hate against them at all, but if I thought sticking up for myself and fighting with them about pay would get me paid more, I would absolutely do it in a heartbeat. I only question if guys are saying that because we know the amount of power that [UFC] have.
“If you try fighting against [UFC], your chances of getting more pay just get diminished. You’re just lowering your chances of getting more pay. So of course you publicly stick up for them even though something in the back of your head is saying, ‘Damn, this isn’t really what I want.’”
Another subject that comes up often regarding fighter pay is the lack of a union to represent MMA’s athletes, which plays a massive part in negotiations with other sports leagues like NFL or NBA.
But even that’s a tough comparison because the NFL is ultimately made up of 32 teams and 32 owners, and the NFL Player’s Association represents athletes across all those various teams who join the union on the day they start playing professional football. Thanks to the revenue sharing model set up for the league, the competition during the season still ultimately benefits everybody under the NFL umbrella.
That’s not the case in MMA.
UFC is by far the biggest and most profitable organization, but there’s no relation between UFC and competitors like the PFL or ONE Championship. A fighters’ union would almost have to be league specific, and that gets even more complicated when you’re dealing with contracts, athletes signing or leaving UFC to go elsewhere, and then maybe even moving on to an international promotion where a union would have no control or influence.
A better comparison would be contrasting UFC to one NFL team with no natural competitors to really challenge them on a global scale.
“UFC is like the [Dallas] Cowboys if the Cowboys had won the past 20 Super Bowls in a row and there’s not even a close second-place team,” Brown said with a laugh. “Like, literally every college star only wants to go to the Cowboys. They have complete power over every Super Bowl.
“They’re going to win for the next 20 Super Bowls and they’re like, ‘You want to go play for the f*cking Bears? Go for it. There’s another kid coming out of college tomorrow, buddy.’”
Brown doesn’t know if there’s ever going to be a solution long-term to solve fighter pay concerns, but he recognizes there’s an ongoing antitrust lawsuit at least attempting to deal with some of the disparity between UFC and other major sports leagues.
In the meantime, Brown offers advice to every other fighter either in UFC or hoping to make it to UFC when it comes to long-term planning for the future.
“If you’re an aspiring UFC fighter or MMA fighter, you need to view the UFC for what it is,” Brown explained. “It is a stage to magnify your brand so you can make money in other ways. That’s where you’re going to make the real money. Even Conor McGregor, he certainly could have retired just off the money he made in the UFC, but he’s made what 10, 20 times more probably outside the UFC? That’s the way you’ve got to do it.
“I hope that changes sometime, where like an NFL player only has four years but as long as they live below their means, which is pretty easy to do when you’re making millions of dollars a year, they can retire just off of four years of [playing football], where in the UFC that’s just not the case.”
