Urijah Faber on Reebok pay: ‘This is the real world, and this is their business’

Urijah Faber

UFC veteran Urijah Faber has always had an entrepreneurial side. So when the business of sponsoring MMA fighters swung into high gear, he started a pair of clothing companies to be more in the driver’s seat when it came to making income beyond his purses.

Faber still co-owns one clothing line, Torque. He sold his interest several years ago in another, Form Athletics.

Now, with the UFC’s Reebok deal going into effect in July, the former WEC champ will sit atop a tiered system of pay. But he will no longer be able to promote his own brand when the promotion requires contractees to wear Reebok gear at its events.

Despite that, Faber said he’ll soldier on.

“It will be business as usual for me,” Faber told MMAjunkie. “Well, to be honest, I’ve decided that my main staple of making cash moving forward is not going to be other opportunities. I’m not going to worry about a couple of grand here and there.

“It is unfortunate, because I have my own clothing brand and I have my own companies that I promote when I fight. But this is the real world, and this is their business. They get to make the rules.”

With 22 fights in the UFC and now-defunct WEC, Faber (32-7 MMA, 8-3 UFC) stands to make an extra $20,000 when he meets Frankie Edgar (18-4-1 MMA, 12-4-1 UFC) in a featherweight headliner on May 16 at UFC Fight Night 66, which takes place at SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay, Philippines.

The majority of veterans on Faber’s Sacramento, Calif.-based fight squad, Team Alpha Male, will make at least $10,000 per fight. One, bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw, will bank the highest possible amount at $40,000. A sometime member, popular women’s strawweight member Paige VanZant, inked an exclusive deal with Reebok earlier this year that will pay an undisclosed sum on top of $2,500 for the lowest tier.

Faber, who was about to head into a team practice when he spoke about the deal, tried to look optimistically at the new sponsor landscape. But he admitted there would be fallout from the UFC’s pay structure.

“I feel like there’s a lot of fighters that are losing money, and the few that will be gaining some money, (and) is it going to progress as it goes on? Possibly,” he said. “Will guys be really upset? Yes. I learned a long time ago that I didn’t get in this sport to be a super-uber wealthy dude because of the fight game – that’s not the world that I live in right now. I can make a great living, better than a lot of my buddies that are in the corporate world, so I can’t really complain.

“But as far as the Reebok deal, I have my own company, so I’d rather be promoting those. I also have sponsors where I’d probably getting more money even though I’m at the tip-top tier. But because of the situation with the UFC having their own sponsors, the sponsors have been dwindling throughout the years, so that’s kind of been my place, to build my own brand, because I feel like we are valuable, and more valuable than people are willing to pay a lot of times.

“Things have changed, so it’s hard to really say, but I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed with the way it turns out.”

The UFC has said it will periodically review the compensation given to athletes. Executives also claimed the majority of fighters it spoke to were happy with the new deal while acknowledging there would be some discontent.

As MMAjunkie previously reported, many fighters and managers are bracing for a financial fallout as the result of lost sponsor income.

With more time in the UFC, Faber has, of course, had more time to amass wealth and brace against uncertainties. As a headliner and star, he’s benefitted greatly from UFC parent Zuffa’s promotional resources in the nine years he’s competed inside the cage. While the payout he’s scheduled to receive may represent a dent in his pocketbook, it’s not one that will force him out of the business.

That doesn’t mean he still feels the hit.

“It’s kind of a tender subject, because we don’t really have a whole lot of say in the whole thing,” Faber said.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.