Athlete outfitting pay for UFC Auckland: Mark Hunt gets $10K

Last night, the UFC touched down in the country of New Zealand for a second time with the exciting UFC Auckland card.

In this card’s main event, we saw Kiwi MMA legend Mark Hunt collide with surging American heavyweight contender Derek Lewis. Hunt would win this fight by punishing an exhausted Lewis to a fourth-round TKO.

In the co-main event, meanwhile, established middleweight contender Derek Brunson looked to rebound from back-t0-back losses against streaking Australian judoka Dan Kelly.

Elsewhere on the main card, we saw Dan “Hangman” Hooker score a crushing, knee-induced knockout over experienced Brit Ross Pearson, 23-year-old Moldovan light heavyweight score a quick knockout over Brazil’s Henrique da Silva, and Australian flyweight Ben Nguyen author an ultra quick submission defeat of recent flyweight title challenger Timothy Elliott.

At the moment, purses for this 11-fight UFC Auckland card have not yet been disclosed. We do, however, know how much each of the card’s 22 fighters pocketed through the UFC’s oft-criticized outfitting deal with sports apparel company Reebok.

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 biggest earner of the night was England’s Pearson, who pocketed $20,000 for his loss to Hooker. The next biggest winners were the main-eventers Hunt and Lewis, and the co-main event winner Brunson, who earned $10,000 for wearing Reebok in their fights.

Here’s a full rundown of the Reebok payout for UFC Auckland (via MMAJunkie.com):

Mark Hunt: $10,000
def. Derrick Lewis: $10,000

Derek Brunson: $10,000
def. Daniel Kelly: $5,000

Dan Hooker: $5,000
def. Ross Pearson: $20,000

Ion Cutelaba: $2,500
def. Luis Henrique da Silva: $2,500

Ben Nguyen: $2,500
def. Tim Elliott: $5,000

Alex Volkanovski: $2,500
def. Mizuto Hirota: $2,500

Vinc Pichel: $2,500
def. Damien Brown: $2,500

Luke Jumeau: $2,500
def. Dominique Steele: $2,500

John Moraga: $10,000
def. Ashkan Mokhtarian: $2,500

Zak Ottow: $2,500
def. Kiichi Kunimoto: $2,500

J.J. Aldrich: $2,500
def. Chanmi Jeon: $2,500

What do you think of the Reebok figures for UFC Auckland?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/11/2017.