When heavyweight champion
Randy Couture made his surprising announcement to retire from UFC, just about everyone agreed that he was underpaid. But
Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports has some surprising figures that indicate Couture was doing better than most people thought:
the contract Couture negotiated and signed before his comeback fight against Tim Sylvia in March is for four fights and between $13 million and $15 million, which puts him behind only Chuck Liddell, at four fights and $17 million, in the UFC salary pecking order. Those numbers are believed to include percentages of pay-per-view money.
That works out to about $3.5 million a fight, and considering that Couture signed that contract at a time when he wasn't expected to win the heavyweight title, that actually doesn't sound like such a bad deal at all. Maybe if UFC president Dana White would act like a reasonable person in his public comments, and not
brag about how he "bitch-slapped" a "scumbag," more people would see the case that
White is right and Couture is wrong, and not think that
White is bad for mixed martial arts.
