UFC 129 Fighter Salaries

He might not be quite as pretty now as he was when he entered the Octagon at UFC 129, but Georges St-Pierre’s bank account looks much nicer today.  GSP was the top earner at Saturday’s monumental UFC 129, pocketing his usual $400,000 base salary.  This also propels GSP to the top of our list of top MMA earners in 2011.  The UFC also gave out its highest purse ever for end of the night bonuses – $129,000 – which caused some fighters to earn more in one night than they had over the course of their whole career.

Before we go any further, we should note that Ontario’s Athletic Commission doesn’t release fighter pay info, so none of the following salary data for the event is official.  However, you can get a fairly accurate picture of a fighter’s pay based on official purse info released from past fights.  So, based on that info, here is the estimated pay breakdown for the 24 fighters that traded blows at the event (but please remember – this is only an estimate, not official info, especially for any fighters that made their UFC debuts at the event).  These numbers obviously also don’t include any PPV revenue, undisclosed bonuses and/or sponsorship money any of these fighters may have made.

Update: we reveal GSP’s PPV revenue and sponsorship earnings for UFC 129 here.

<!– if (typeof(document.getElementById('ncomments_js')) == 'undefined' || document.getElementById('ncomments_js') == null) { document.write('’); } // –>
Georges St-Pierre: $400,000 ($200,000 to show, $200,000 win bonus)

Lyoto Machida: $329,000 ($200,000 to show, $129,000 Knockout of the Night bonus)

Randy Couture: $250,000

Jose Aldo: $177,000 ($24,000 to show, $24,000 win bonus, $129,000 Fight of the Night bonus)

Pablo Garza: $137,000 ($4,000 to show, $4,000 win bonus, $129,000 Submission of the Night bonus)

Mark Hominick: $135,000 ($6,000 to show, $129,000 Fight of the Night bonus)

Jake Shields: $75,000

Vladimir Matyushenko: $62,000 ($31,000 to show, $31,000 win bonus)

Jason MacDonald: $52,000 ($26,000 to show, $26,000 win bonus)

Jake Ellenberger: $40,000 ($20,000 to show, $20,000 win bonus)

Ben Henderson: $34,000 ($17,000 to show, $17,000 win bonus)

Nate Diaz: $33,000

John Makdessi: $20,000 ($10,000 to show, $10,000 win bonus)

Rory MacDonald: $16,000 ($8,000 to show, $8,000 win bonus)

Mark Bocek: $15,000

Jason Brilz: $13,000

Claude Patrick: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)

Daniel Roberts: $12,000

Charlie Valencia: $10,000

Ryan Jensen: $10,000

Ivan Menjivar: $8,000 ($4,000 to show, $4,000 win bonus)

Kyle Watson: $8,000

Sean Pierson: $8,000

Yves Jabouin: $4,000