An old-school amateur wrestling type who believes hard work leads to good things, [autotag]Gray Maynard[/autotag] was never one to complain in public.
Maynard, an All-American at Michigan State, had an 11-year run in the UFC, much of it spent as one of the world’s top lightweights. He’s best remembered for his legendary trilogy with Frankie Edgar. Maynard won the first fight via unanimous decision in 2008, when both were on their way up. The second fight, on New Year’s Day in 2011 at UFC 125, was for Edgar’s lightweight title. The split draw after 25 minutes of furious action is still name-checked on the short list of greatest fights in MMA history. Edgar won the third match at UFC 136 by fourth-round stoppage to retain his title.
With two narrow defeats in title fights, Maynard came as close to making big money without quite getting there as a fighter ever will, but he had little to say about it along the way.
Fast forward to 2020, and change is afoot. The fever that kept fighters silent about pay matters seems to be breaking. Maybe it was the UFC paying a dividend of $300 million to celebrity vanity investors like Ben Affleck and Gisele Bunchen, who never set foot in the cage. Maybe it was UFC president Dana White talking a big game about an extravagant “Fight Island.” Or maybe the coronavirus pandemic just got people to the point they’re tired of keeping their mouths shut on what they see as injustice.
Either way, fighters have started to speak up about money. Documented information in an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against the UFC have pegged the fighters’ share of company revenue at about 18 percent, as opposed to the roughly 50-50 split found in most major sports leagues. Two of MMA’s biggest draws, Jon Jones and Jorge Masvidal, openly have challenged the system. Henry Cejudo retired, Conor McGregor has claimed he’s doing so, too, and Amanda Nunes is pondering the notion.
So the 41-year-old Maynard, a free agent who hasn’t fought since 2018 at UFC 229, has decided to break his silence on his past experiences.
“When I heard Jon Jones and Jorge Masvidal speak up, I was really glad to hear that,” Maynard told MMA Junkie. “This really isn’t about me. I’m near the end of my career. I don’t resent others who are making money. I just want things to be more fair for everyone.
“My generation got this (sport) to the point where our efforts helped legitimize the UFC in the sports world as a real sport and a real league, but that’s just been for the promotion’s benefit. Now it’s time for the rest of this business to improve conditions and come around and treat the athletes like they belong in a big league.”
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Maynard spoke out on Twitter last week when he opened up about his pay for the two title fights with Edgar. Fans have long been told in vague terms that fighters make considerably more money than the disclosed purses on athletic commission pay sheets.
However, Maynard was only guaranteed $26,000 as show money for his UFC 125 fight with Edgar. For a fight that did a reported 270,000 pay-per-view buys at about $50 a pop, and a live gate of $2.17 million, Maynard got a $100,000 discretionary bonus, otherwise he might have lost money when factoring in taxes and cornermen and training camp costs.
“I think that’s deliberate on (the UFC’s) part,” Maynard said. “I think they know what they’re doing. They want to keep their fighters poor because it keeps them hungry, and they’ve gotten away with it all these years. They pay you on a tip system like you’re a stripper or something.”
UFC 125 came just days after Anthony Pettis defeated Benson Henderson for the WEC lightweight belt in the final WEC event after executing the “Showtime kick,” an early MMA viral moment, and Maynard believes he was short-changed on the third fight out of spite for mucking up the plans on what would have been a hot fight between Pettis and Edgar.
“It was a good cop, bad cop thing,” Maynard said. “Dana was all smiles and, ‘Hey, great fight, pal.’ (Then-UFC matchmaker) Joe Silva didn’t want me to get another title shot because he wanted Pettis, but the public demand was too great. Then Joe calls me, and I’m only guaranteed $42,000 for the rematch, but what can I do? I’ve got a contract. I can’t go anywhere else, so you go back into training camp and put your belief in yourself that you’ll get the belt, and that way you’ve finally got a little bit of leverage – or at least you did back then.”
This was part of an ongoing learning process about the fight game’s machinery. Maynard, who entered the UFC through Season 5 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” forced his way into the title picture by running through a series of top-elite opponents, including the first Edgar fight, Nate Diaz, Jim Miller, and Kenny Florian.
Meanwhile, Maynard watched the UFC give softer matchups to others who were perceived as more marketable, such as fellow lightweight Roger Huerta, who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the venerable magazine’s first-ever major UFC feature in 2007.
But Huerta had fallen out of favor by the time he was matched up with Maynard in 2009 at UFC Fight Night 19, and Maynard claims Silva all but goaded him to Huerta, in a fight Maynard ultimately won by split decision.
“They had me fight Huerta. He was their golden boy, and I guess he fell out of favor, and Joe told me he wanted me to go out and break his arm,” Maynard said. “Joe Silva was the most unprofessional man I’ve ever worked with in my life. He was just an angry little man.”
Reached by MMA Junkie on Wednesday, Silva declined comment.
After the Edgar fights, Maynard, who was not an extravagant spender, found himself in the same position as many fighters who were respected veterans on the card. He never made superstar money as MMA’s conveyor belt kept moving.
To shake things up, Maynard moved to American Kickboxing Academy, where the Bay Area’s high cost of living didn’t help his finances. His wife was working on her masters degree. Injuries started to pile up. Losing a fight meant he’d make half the pay under the UFC’s show/win money system. Things started to snowball as a fighter who was 10-0 going into the UFC 125 title fight found himself at 11-5-1 in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
“Look, I’m the one who chose to move from Las Vegas, where it’s cheap, to the Bay Area, and the guys at AKA were great,” Maynard said. “But if you make ($50,000) for a fight, and federal and state taxes come out of it, and the cost of your training camp and everything factored in, and you lose and don’t get your win bonus, that’s poverty level in the Bay Area. Why should that be happening when the company makes this much money?”
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Maynard has heard the talk over the years suggesting that fighters should unionize, and he says gym chatter about fighter organization was constant. But the simple reality for any fighter not among the chosen few was having to worry about paying bills.
“People say all the time, ‘Hey, if you guys are so smart, why didn’t you form a union?’ We talked about it!” Maynard said. “We’d talk about it all the time in the gym. But you have to understand that most of us were in a position where we’re just thinking about paying our bills, and I mean, damn, I’m thinking about getting groceries for my family next week. How can I go on strike and not fight?”
Even with the UFC valued at $7 billion, that condition hasn’t changed much, as UFC fighters in the Endeavor era are on contracts that run as low as $10,000 to show and $10,000 to win. Maynard believes the best route is for Congress to extend Ali Act to MMA. The 2000 law protects boxers from exploitation and conflicts of interest. Since 2016, there has been a bipartisan attempt to extend the act to mixed martial arts, although White’s closeness to President Donald Trump doesn’t bode well in the short term, even if the act was to pass.
However this plays out, Maynard wants his fellow fighters to know he’s going to be there.
“Jon and Jorge are both guys who have put in their time and have the respect of everyone,” Maynard said. “You have a limited window to compete and an even smaller window to make real money. So if you’re someone like Jorge, who has worked as hard as he had, he shouldn’t be going backwards on his contract. You never heard me complain during my career. I’m not going to get rich from this. I just think if everyone else is starting to speak up, then I should be there and stand with them.”
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