Brazilian legend Anderson Silva is expected to receive the highest individual payout from the long-running antitrust case against the UFC, good for about $10.3 million, putting him at the top of the list of former fighters to be compensated.
The settlement was tentatively approved last year and totals $375 million for the class of more than a thousand fighters who competed for the UFC between 2010 and mid-2017, a period during which the promotion allegedly squeezed the market and suppressed salaries, according to the lawsuit. The UFC does not admit fault, but agreed to pay to end the dispute.
After deducting legal and administrative costs, some $251 million remains to be distributed to 1,088 submitted claims, with the payout based on a fixed formula that combines a percentage of one's combat earnings in the relevant years with an amount per fight. In doing so, both a person's volume of earnings and activity weigh into the final amount paid out.
The range of payouts is wide, running from about $16,138 for the lowest check to $10,334,241 for the highest, with an average of about $231,022 and a median of $86,035, figures that put the severity of Silvas payouts in perspective.
That precisely Silva ends up at the top is explainable; he fought 10 times in the specified period including multiple title fights and was partly because of that one of the biggest prize draws within the organization, which made the formula work out in his favor. The actual division is in line with the high participation rate of the class and is seen by the law firms involved as a breakthrough in an issue that lasted nearly a decade.
Once the remaining administrative steps are completed, the money will flow to the former UFC fighters, marking a rare payout at scale in mixed martial arts, a correction that observers say could have implications for future negotiations in the industry.
