The Savage Truth: The Most Powerful Man In MMA

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Did you feel that rumble after Conor McGregor knocked out Jose Aldo at UFC 194 on Saturday and established himself as the clear-cut, undisputed No. 1 fighter in mixed martial arts?

Well, in case you missed it, the Irishman dispatched Aldo, who had been unbeaten over the past 10 years, with shocking ease and in the manner he had predicted during the run up to this mega fight. “Mystic Mac,” the man who calls his shots, did it again and in doing so erased any doubts he belongs at the top of the featherweight division. He also established himself and his brand as the most valuable commodity in the world of MMA.

While McGregor hasn’t just come out and said he wants to rip up his old/new contract, his actions and cryptic statements over the last couple of weeks lend quite a bit of credence to the narrative that he’s interested in maximizing his earning potential at every turn now that he’s the undisputed featherweight champion of the world. He finds himself in a unique situation for a fighter under contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He is apparently unwilling to toe the company line on every occasion, and he has openly campaigned for a nine-figure contract -- something with which the promotion can’t be thrilled, seeing how it has kept fighter pay in check for so long.

While I don’t have a particular bone to pick with the UFC and how it pays its entry-level fighters -- the issues seems to come up regularly when people discuss fighter pay -- I have always maintained that the superstars of the sport are the ones who are suffering under the current pay structure. I’d assume McGregor would agree with me on that point, and it seems he’s set to take matters into his own hands.

All the talk of $100 million contracts, co-promoting cards and UFC President Dana White being his “associate” have given credence to the notion that the newly crowned champion is here to shake up the traditional UFC-fighter relationship in ways we’ve never seen before. This man is a living, breathing blessing and curse for the organization that stands to make more money promoting his fights than it ever has before. Why, might you ask?

Should McGregor get the rumored $20 million per fight he is seeking, think about what that does to the economic environment in which high-end UFC fighters currently operate. And let’s be clear, I’m not talking about high-end talent or ranking; I’m talking about the fighters who actually move the needle and sell pay-per-views. There aren’t a whole lot of them out there, but again, in my opinion, they are the ones who are woefully underpaid.

McGregor has been keen in paying attention to the numbers. He has talked about them from the start and reveled not only in his ability to smash his opponents but in the record-breaking numbers he has produced at this point in his career. He understands those numbers don’t come without him on the card, and he deserves a huge chunk of the cash that comes along with them.

The same goes for Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones and whoever else proves they can generate the kind of incremental revenue these stars have. When your presence on a card creates an economic windfall, I say you are entitled to a significant share of that loot. The UFC has been rewarding their pay-per-view movers for over a decade now by cutting them in on the profits, but the amount of money it pays out still leaves it with a disproportionate percentage of the profits.

I’m not saying the UFC has been unfair to this point: There are a whole lot of millionaires who have strapped on the gloves in the Octagon. The problem is McGregor is a very special case and once he succeeds -- and he will succeed -- at increasing his slice of the pie, whether he gets his wish to co-promote or not, there will be a line of fighters queuing up with their hands out.

This is the dilemma for the UFC executives who are looking at McGregor with dollar signs in their eyes. They want to keep the golden goose happy, laying a couple of his treasured eggs a year, but they also want to keep a lid on fighter pay. How they handle this tricky situation will have a far-reaching effect on fighter compensation going forward.

The public relations aspect shouldn’t be lost on the company or its fighters, either. The UFC and White, in particular, have used the bully pulpit to get their message out to the fans and media time and again. It seems that hasn’t been lost on McGregor, who has been extremely smart to spout the numbers he has generated. While many looked at him as a braggart, he was laying the foundation of his case to collect a much higher ratio of the financial proceeds from his fights than anyone in MMA has been able to achieve before.

Make no mistake about it, McGregor is about to cash in big time. The thing I’m really curious to see is if any of the other big stars follow his lead and use their leverage to secure the kind of deals I and many others feel they deserve.

Sherdog.com Executive Editor Greg Savage can be reached by email at [email protected] or via Twitter @TheSavageTruth.