UFC fighter pay has been a rather hot topic of late, so what better way to highlight how strange UFC’s pay scale can be than to look at the case of Chan Sung Jung, better known as the Korean Zombie. The Korean Zombie will go into his first UFC title fight against Jose Aldo at UFC 163 and, well, he won’t be making that much money to participate in the fight.
According to Jung himself, he is set to make $20,000 to show and $20,000 if he wins, with no PPV bonus in sight for him.
I will be making 20,000 dollars to show, and another 20,000 dollars if I win. I do not get any PPV points. After 2 more fights, I will be able to negotiate my contract. Hopefully, I will be in a good position when that happens.
Contrast that with Jose Aldo whose pay is $120k to show, $120k to win, at least it was at UFC 156. It reminds me a lot of the Shane Carwin situation where he was going to be paid $50k to fight Brock Lesnar, who was going to be getting, well, a lot more than that.