Athlete Outfitting Pay for UFC 221: Yoel Romero Pockets $10,000

By Tom Taylor - February 11, 2018

Last night, the UFC made its debut in the beautiful Australian port city of Perth with the action-packed UFC 221.

Yoel Romero wins at UFC 221

In the main event of this anticipated card, former Olympic silver medalist and long-time UFC middleweight contender Yoel Romero executed one of his best wins to date, clubbing former champion Luke Rockhold to a third-round knockout win. With this win, Romero seems to have secured himself a rematch with the division’s current champion Robert Whittaker.

In the UFC 221 co-main event, rising heavyweight contender Curtis Blaydes picked up the best win of his career thus far, braving an early scare to wrestle heavyweight legend Mark Hunt to an impressive, unanimous decision win.

Elsewhere on the card, meanwhile, we saw big wins from Australian stars Tai Tuivasa, Tyson Pedro and, Alexander Volkanovski, and New Zealand’s Israel Adesanya.

While the official fight purses for this card have not yet been disclosed, we do know how much each fighter on the bill pocketed for wearing Reebok through the UFC’s athlete outfitting program.

Under the UFC’s deal with Reebok, fighters are paid based on the amount of fights they’ve had in the UFC’s Octagon, and in the Zuffa-owned eras of Strikeforce (April 2011 and after) and WEC (January 2007 and after). Champions and title challengers, however, are paid $40,000 and $30,000 respectively, regardless of their experience in the aforementioned promotions. These are the two highest payouts possible under this UFC-Reebok partnership.

Under this framework, the card’s biggest earner was Luke Rockhold, who pocketed $30,000 for wearing Reebok. Had Yoel Romero made weight for his bout with Rockhold, he’d have earned the same, but unfortunately his weigh-in miss meant that he was not technically a title challenger.

Here’s a full rundown of the UFC 221 athlete outfitting pay (via MMAJunkie.com).

Yoel Romero: $10,000
def. Luke Rockhold: $30,000

Curtis Blaydes: $5,000
def. Mark Hunt: $15,000

Tai Tuivasa: $3,500
def. Cyril Asker: $5,000

Jake Matthews: $5,000
def. Li Jingliang: $5,000

Tyson Pedro: $5,000
def. Saparbek Safarov: $3,500

”Maestro” Dong Hyun Kim: $5,000
def. Damien Brown: $5,000

Israel Adesanya: $3,500
def. Rob Wilkinson: $3,500

Alex Volkanovski: $5,000
def. Jeremy Kennedy: $5,000

Jussier Formiga: $10,000
def. Ben Nguyen: $5,000

Ross Pearson: $20,000
def. Mizuto Hirota: $5,000

Jose Quinonez: $5,000
def. Teruto Ishihara: $5,000

Luke Jumeau: $3,500
def. Daichi Abe: $3,500

What do you think of the Reebok numbers for UFC 221?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 2/11/2018.


Topics:

Reebok UFC 221 Yoel Romero