The thing about dropping a huge boulder into the combat sports pond — and Zuffa Boxing’s signing of Conor Benn was most certainly that — is that it inevitably ripples out in all directions. We’re still seeing those ripples now, with everyone reacting in their own special ways.
Those reactions, if we look closely, are very telling. They let us know not only where we are, but also how we got here.
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For instance, start with Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn. He’s worked with Benn for roughly a decade now, and said he was told by Benn’s attorney that the deal was a fait accompli and there was nothing for them to talk about.
“I’m not going to sit here and hang Conor Benn out to dry,” Hearn told iFL TV shortly after news of Benn’s departure became public. “But I’ve got to be honest with you. Me personally? Pretty devastated.”
Hearn went on to call the news “very surprising” and “very, very painful,” while also mixing in some lamentations about unrequited loyalty and the cruel mistress that is the business of boxing. The thing about that response is, he does actually seem to care. He’s hurt by this development. And he’s not afraid to admit it.
Then on the other hand there’s Dana White, the UFC CEO who has positioned himself as the new savior of boxing. Enticing Benn away from Hearn, his most vocal rival in the business thus far, is a major coup for him.
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“I think you saw this week, I am really beating up babies,” White said at a press conference for this past weekend’s UFC event. “Is there a bigger p**** than Eddie Hearn? This guy [Benn] is supposed to be your friend. You’re f***ing crying. He made more money. He’s going to make more money, and [Hearn] had the right to match it. He could’ve matched it.”
What’s interesting there is that you don’t hear so much about what a great fighter Benn is and how excited White is to promote his fights. Instead, it’s all about how this signing is a great victory over Hearn. And the fact that Hearn was willing to say it hurt to have Benn switch sides? That admission, in White’s eyes, just makes him a big ol’ … well, you get it.
By now the news of the signing — and the reported $15 million price tag associated with it — has also made its way to current UFC fighters. Some of them are quite reasonably doing a little compare-and-contrast on how the same people who sign their checks seem to have a lot more cash lying around when it comes to signing new boxers.
Dana White’s Zuffa signed Conor Benn to a reported one-fight, $15 million deal — a significantly more lucrative payday than the majority of top UFC stars get.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
Take former UFC bantamweight champ Sean O’Malley, who said he’d never heard of Benn and at first found the payout hard to believe.
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“If they really paid him $15 million, it’s like … it’s crazy how you put in so much work in the UFC to build this name, create this character, be this star, and I’m not making f***ing $15 million a fight,” O’Malley said. “But it’s also a business. If they think that’s a good business move and that guy’s going to bring in money, it’s like, I get it. I don’t take anything personal in business. Business is business.”
If you’re familiar with the stages of grief, you’ll note that O’Malley just went from denial to anger to acceptance with a Homer Simpson-like speed. He started out wondering how in the world a boxer who’s never held a major world title could get a one-fight deal worth more than the entire payroll of several UFC events combined, then ended up concluding that things just be like that sometimes so whaddaya gonna do?
This is also a very telling reaction. What it tells us is that UFC fighters have become very used to this sort of thing. Most of them know they’re underpaid. They know it’s not because the company they work for simply doesn’t have more money to give them. They know other fighters in other combat sports are making more than they are. But they also feel powerless to do anything about it, so it’s easier to just tell themselves that things must be this way for a good reason.
Maybe this is just what happens when the usual order of things gets suddenly shaken up. Everyone reaches for what they know, seeking comfort in the familiar. Everyone tries to understand this new present using the tools they gathered in their respective pasts. No one knows for sure where any of this is going, and that uncertainty is unsettling.
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What we do know is that this is a pretty good time to be a big-name boxer. When promoters go to war using their wallets, it’s the pieces they’re fighting over who stand to benefit the most. Meanwhile, all the current crop of MMA fighters can do is to watch from the outside and wonder what that must be like.
