It was good to be Brazilian at UFC Rio: Silva vs Okami. The Rio crowd was roaring for their “hometown” heroes, Brazilians came out on top of 10 of their 11 bouts, and Brazilian fighters also went home with the biggest cheques. The resurgent Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira was the top earner of the event, taking home a half a million for his shocking knockout of Brendan Schaub.
Before we go any further, we should note that the Athletic Commission in Rio 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
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira: $500,000 ($250,000 to show, $150,000 win bonus, $100,000 Knockout of the Night bonus)
Mauricio Rua: $230,000 ($160,000 to show, $70,000 win bonus)
Anderson Silva: $200,000
Forrest Griffin: $125,000
Ross Pearson: $120,000 ($20,000 to show, $100,000 Fight of the Night bonus)
Edson Barboza: $120,000 ($10,000 to show, $10,000 win bonus, $100,000 Fight of the Night bonus)
Thiago Tavares: $38,000 ($19,000 to show, $19,000 win bonus)
Paulo Thiago: $36,000 ($18,000 to show, $18,000 win bonus)
Raphael Assuncao: $30,000 ($15,000 to show, $15,000 win bonus)
Spencer Fisher: $26,000
Yushin Okami: $23,000
Dan Miller: $23,000
Luiz Cane: $19,000
Rousimar Palhares: $14,000 ($7,000 to show, $7,000 win bonus)
Stanislav Nedkov: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)
Erick Silva: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)
Yuri Alcantara: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)
Yves Jabouin: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 win bonus)
Brendan Schaub: $10,000
David Mitchell: $6,000
Johnny Eduardo: $6,000
Luis Ramos: $6,000
Felipe Arantes: $6,000
Ian Loveland: $6,000
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