If there’s one thing archenemies Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz can agree on, it is that the UFC should pay them more.
The question is how much.
Diaz revealed his number on Wednesday.
“I’m only fighting at lightweight for a big fight or $20 million just to take the call,” Diaz told MMAFighting.com.
He also said he has no interest in a McGregor trilogy unless the UFC makes it rain.
“I already beat him, and they aren’t paying enough to fight him again,” Diaz said.
McGregor doesn’t want a specific dollar amount. He wants an equity stake or partial ownership of the entire UFC, a point he first brought up after he knocked out Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 and which he reiterated this week.
“The new owners from WME-IMG, the guys that bought the UFC for $4 billion, I want to speak to them,” McGregor told RTE Sport in Ireland.
While the two combatants want different things from the UFC, their requests seem equally unrealistic — even if that’s how any good negotiation begins.
WME-IMG has been cutting staff at the UFC since they bought the fight promotion in July, according to MMAFighting.com, and is preparing to negotiate a new TV deal, asking for $4.5 billion. The owners are unlikely to give up a piece of their gigantic pie to a single fighter, even one as important as McGregor.
Diaz’s $20 million demand is out of whack compared to what most UFC fighters make.
McGregor and Ronda Rousey are by far the highest-paid fighters on UFC’s roster. Yet for a fight like his rematch against Diaz at UFC 202, McGregor’s fight purse was $3 million. In addition to the announced purse, the Irishman also got a percentage of the event’s pay-per-view buys, and Forbes estimates he totaled $10 million to $15 million for the highly anticipated bout. Diaz’s fight purse for UFC 202 was only $1 million and he likely only got one-third as much of the PPV take as McGregor did, according to Forbes.
The UFC does not release fighter’s exact salaries.
Diaz is not completely off his rocker because the biggest event the UFC could set up right now would be a third McGregor-Diaz fight. That’s not only because their UFC 202 fight set all sorts of PPV records — subsequently broken by McGregor at UFC 205 — but because it’s the only plausible McGregor fight with a compelling storyline.
McGregor and Diaz have one win apiece against each other. They are great at trash talk. They have completely opposite career paths and lifestyles. And this time a title would be on the line.
Plus, there’s no other clear fight for either McGregor or Diaz to make because both the featherweight and lightweight divisions are in shambles.
After McGregor won the lightweight title at 205, the UFC forced him to give up the featherweight title, which was promptly awarded to Jose Aldo. He’s now the “undisputed” 145-pound champ, but then the UFC announced Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis would fight at UFC 206 for the “interim” featherweight title. Pettis, however, missed weight and got handily beaten by Holloway on an amazing UFC card completely lacking in star power.
Thus, Aldo is the “undisputed” champ, Holloway is the “interim” champ. McGregor has beaten them both and remains undefeated at 145 pounds in the UFC.
In the lightweight division, McGregor is undoubtedly the champion, but there is no clear No. 1 contender.
Khabib Nurmagomedov looks and talks like a James Bond villain, is atop the UFC rankings in the division and thrust himself into the public eye when he called McGregor a “chicken” after he dismantled Michael Johnson on the UFC 205 undercard. But Nurmagomedov is coming off two years of injuries, and his health is still in question.
Second-ranked Tony Ferguson, who just beat Rafael Dos Anjos in extremely impressive fashion, is another possible McGregor opponent. But he doesn’t have the out-of-the-Octagon trash-talking skills to sell a fight like Diaz or Nurmagomedov can.
Finally, Diaz is great both inside and outside the cage, but he’s currently the sixth-ranked fighter in the division, according to the UFC’s rankings, and has nine wins and nine losses in his past 18 fights.
Given the obstacles in the way of any lightweight fight with McGregor, it makes sense the UFC wanted Nurmagomedov and Ferguson to fight for the “interim” lightweight champion while the organization waits for McGregor’s next move. But Ferguson is injured, he can’t agree on a date or terms with Nurmagomedov, and Aldo recently claimed he would get an “interim lightweight title fight” in the very near future.
The lightweight and featherweights pictures are beyond convoluted, so it is impossible to know who McGregor and Diaz will fight next.
In all likelihood, that means that a trilogy is in the works. Because as with all things fighting, one needs only to follow the money to know the future.