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The MMA community is buzzing about the reported pay that Gegard Mousasi earned to destroy Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Renato “Babalu” Sobral last weekend.
The California State Athletic Commission released payroll figures for the event, with Gina Carano earning an event-high $125,000 for her loss to Cris Cyborg, who earned $25,000 for the title win over the marketable Carano. On the low end of the totem poll was Mousasi, who earned a reported $2,000 for his star-making victory.
There’s more than meets the eye on this story, however. The figure put out there by the CSAC is what Strikeforce paid Mousasi for the fight, but that’s not what he earned. Much like Fedor Emelianenko’s strange contracts over the years, Mousasi earned far more than the reported figure – but most of the money was paid under the table to M-1, who then turns around and pays Mousasi.
We don’t have an exact figure on what Mousasi earned and likely never will, but it certainly wasn’t $2,000. Of course, there are plenty of stories floating around about Fedor’s contract and earnings with Affliction; M-1 reportedly received roughly $1.5 million per Fedor fight in Affliction, but Emelianenko only saw $200,000 of that money. Judging by that figure and the fact that Mousasi was being paid $125,000 per fight in Affliction, we can assume that he probably earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $35,000 for the Sobral fight.
That’s still highway robbery, but it’s far better than the $2,000 Strikeforce chipped in.
Tags: Fedor, Gegard Mousasi, M -1
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