Who was the top earner in the UFC in 2021? No real surprise, especially considering there’s a photo attached to this article that gives it away, but anytime Conor McGregor steps into the octagon, he’s going to grab the biggest paycheck. Especially if he fights multiple times in a year, as he did in 2021.
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Before the hate mail comes in, I’m stating loud and clear that the numbers below are ONLY ESTIMATES! I’ve got a good system at predicting fighter purse info, and the pay-per-view payout formula was recently released, so I was able to crunch that part of the payouts. But not all fighter purses are released by the athletic commissions and not all of the PPV buyrate numbers are released, so there are some educated estimates going into these calculations. And does every fighter who gets a cut of the PPV get paid on the same scale that was released? What if the champion is in the co-main event or even the third fight from the top. And are there many non-champions that get a cut? Those factors are unknown. With that out of the way, here is some ‘back on the envelope’ calculations as to the top UFC earners in 2021.
| Rank | Purse | PPV | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conor McGregor | $ 10,022,000 | $8,500,000 | $18,522,000 |
| 2 | Dustin Poirier | $ 2,473,000 | $8,500,000 | $10,973,000 |
| 3 | Israel Adesanya | $ 2,024,000 | $3,200,000 | $ 5,224,000 |
| 4 | Kamaru Usman | $ 1,082,000 | $3,700,000 | $ 4,782,000 |
| 5 | Jan Blachowicz | $ 1,182,000 | $2,800,000 | $ 3,982,000 |
| 6 | Amanda Nunes | $ 932,000 | $3,000,000 | $ 3,932,000 |
| 7 | Petr Yan | $ 784,000 | $2,000,000 | $ 2,784,000 |
| 8 | Valentina Shevchenko | $ 284,000 | $2,150,000 | $ 2,434,000 |
| 9 | Rose Namajunas | $ 444,000 | $1,750,000 | $ 2,194,000 |
| 10 | Zhang Weili | $ 430,000 | $1,750,000 | $ 2,180,000 |
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