Over the past few years I have become obsessed with MMA, to the point where I have crossed the line from observer to participant and taken a few punches to the face, albeit only a few times in Malahide MMA. I enjoy staying up on a Saturday night to all hours to watch the fights and then the press conference after. There is however one aspect of the sport I don’t enjoy and it is the danger fighters put themselves into in order to compete at the top.
Now I am not going to be the first or the last to point out that Mixed Martial Arts is a dangerous sport, any contact sport is. But being a contact sport is not the main reason as to why it is can be dangerous. It is what fighters are doing to themselves in order to compete and in some cases what they are forced to do in order to earn a living for themselves. I wanted to look a little deeper into something that has been on my mind for a little while. I wanted to look at why fighters put themselves at unnecessary risks in order to compete at the top and what the results of those risks could be. These risks include fighting injured, too often, and also poor preparation for fights including dangerous weight cutting. In this part I will look at how carrying injuries into a fight can be fatal to your fighting career
The UFC is considered the Premier League of the Mixed Martial Arts World. Most fighters looking to make a living from fighting full time will usually aim to make it into the UFC. When they get there the average fighter will fight anywhere between three to four fights in a year and earn on average (based on disclosed pay from UFC 191 on September 5th) $61,500 per fight.*(Source :Bloody Elbow).
Although this does seem like quite a healthy salary, especially for one nights work, that average figure is boosted by fighters such as Anthony Johnson, Frank Mir and Andrei Arlovski who each earned a disclosed amount of at least $200,000. On the other end of the scale there is UFC Newcomer Nazareno Malegarie who only received $10,000 dollars for his fight pass prelim opener at UFC 191. Prelim headliner, Paul Felder only earned a disclosed $18,000 dollars for his fight against Ross Pearson. You and I would look at $18,000 or even $10,000 dollars as not bad for a single nights work, but thats not true unfortunately. It is not just a days work, it is usually the result of maybe six to seven weeks of hard training if not more, you would have your coaches and corner men who need to be paid out of that $10k, perhaps a home mortgage, a car repayment and childcare costs. It all adds up and if you get injured, No Bueno.
If you are only earning a disclosed amount of around $10-15k per fight, chances are you are going to have to fight several times in a year in order to make a decent living for yourself. If you are fit and healthy and not cutting too much weight then usually thats not a problem for most. However we do not live in an ideal world and fighters might be unwilling to disclose injuries that happen in training and will go into a fight with their bodies not at a 100%.
In my second ever MMA class, I broke my baby toe rolling on the mats practising guard defence. A silly injury but one that happened easily enough and kept me off the mats for nearly six weeks. Now for me, the broken toe was an inconvenience, I wrapped it up, moaned about it for a week or five and let it recover. Life went on, as a banker I don’t depend on my toe to earn money to pay my bills.
Fighters on the other hand do. I can only imagine if guys are training for four or five fights a year in seven or eight week camps at a time, that the chances are that they are going to pick up small little injuries along the way like my broken toe. Injuries that they will probably carry into the fight as they can’t afford to let it stop them. Conor McGregor went into his UFC 178 fight with Dustin Poirier last September with torn ligaments in his thumb, and also went into his UFC 189 bout with Chad Mendes with a knee injury. Conor was very lucky that his fight with Poirier didn’t go longer than ninety seconds and that the torn ligaments were in his right hand, not his leading left hand. He was also lucky that he fought Chad Mendes and his wrestling instead of Jose Aldo with his heavy leg kicks at UFC 189. Had Aldo been landing his infamous leg kicks on Conor’s injured knee that he tore his ACL in, it is unclear how long he would be out of action for now.
Luck may not always be on Conor’s side, if he continues to go into fights carrying injuries, he may end up like former bantamweight champion Dominic Cruz, sidelined for the prime of his career whilst the hype train rolls on. Now Conor’s larger than life personality will see that he will never be short of money but the same can’t be said for every fighter on the UFC roster. Three years on the sideline equals game over for most fighters.
Fighters therefore won’t make injuries public before a fight if they do intend to fight through it, otherwise the athletic commission may not sanction the fight resulting in a total loss of income for both you and your opponent, or your opponent will know to focus on the part of your body that is injured if the fight does still manage to go ahead. Neither situation is ideal, especially if you are like UFC newcomer Nazareno Malegarie and only earning $10K for a couple of months work. If he were to get injured, how would he pay his training staff, his corner men and any other expenses a fighter may have in the two month lead up to a fight. A quick return would be his only option assuming the UFC were even willing to give a newcomer another chance.
For this series, I got a little input from George Lockhart. To those who don’t know him, George is a nutritionist and trainer who has helped the likes of UFC welterweight title challenger Rory McDonald, UFC bantamweight contender Raphael Assuncao and will be working with Invicta FC featherweight champion Cris Cyborg in her bid to reach 135lb’s in order to challenge Ronda Rousey for the UFC women’s bantamweight championship.
As a former fighter himself, a respected trainer and highly sought after nutritionist, very few people understand how the human body works quite like George does. I asked George what he thought about how fighters prepare and if their preparations could have serious repercussions. His response was that “Many guys don’t realise that just because you can get away with things now doesn’t mean you can get away with them when you’re older. Not recovering correctly over the course of a career has life long effects.” Fighters are doing a lot of long term harm to their bodies in return for a short term reward.
There are a few things that need to change in the MMA world to stop fighters putting themselves at unnecessary risk. Ideally fighter compensation needs to increase so that fighters don’t need to fight as often as possible in order to pull in a decent salary. They should be guaranteed a certain amount of income if they or their opponent is unable to make a fight as a result of genuine injury. Until this is done, fighters will continue to take fights with underlying injuries just so they can provide a better life for themselves in the short run whilst also doing untold damage to their bodies that may not become apparent until these fighters reach the end of their careers or even some years after.
George Lockhart on the MMA Hour.
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