Sean Strickland’s controversy with the UFC’s pay structure has become very public in recent weeks. The current UFC middleweight champion has expressed himself many times online, regarding his dissatisfaction with what he wants to do as champion for the remainder of the long-term contract with the company. Strickland has publicly considered releasing his title, nucleate your contract or fights his way out of the deal with boring fights. Strickland has also said he would switch to boxingwhere TKO/ZUFFA seems to pay their athletes a premium.
Many of the usual talking heads have had their say on Strickland’s situation, including Daniel Cormier and Michael Bisping. Now it’s Demetrious Johnson.
The former UFC flyweight champion is now a professional content creator with increasingly hot takes lately.
He spoke Yahoo Sports About Strickland and what he’d like to see next.
“I’ve been in his position before. At the end of the day, I fought through my championship contract because I wanted more money and they weren’t going to give me more money,” Johnson said. Johnson’s claim that he fought out his contract is interesting because at the time it appeared that his active contract was traded to the ONE Championship for Ben Askren’s rights.
Johnson said he felt he deserved more money from the UFC because he was an exciting fighter and dominant champion during his tenure there. After all that, Johnson reduced Strickland’s dilemma to a simple binary choice.
“So you have to decide if he wants to fight or not? It’s a very simple question. Do you want to fight, yes or no? That’s how I do business.”
Sounds like a huge oversimplification, but OK. Johnson then complained about making more money during his UFC career before saying he wasn’t going to complain about it.
“There has to come a point where, when is enough?” Johnson said. “Do I wish I made more money? One thousand percent. But I’m not going to sit here and complain about it. What’s done is done. Now I’m moving on and I think if you see an athlete sign a nine-fight contract, if he’s happy with it, I have to be happy with his decision.”
When he returned to Strickland, Johnson offered another interesting take on the situation. He suggested that Strickland could have signed his new contract before the Khamzat Chimaev fight earlier this year, assuming he would lose to Chimaev and thus not have to worry about the championship clause (where the UFC can automatically renew a fighter’s contract).
Johnson presents this theory as follows:
“I (prefer) him just coming out and saying, ‘Hey, this is what I want. The UFC won’t give it to me, so guys, I’ll fight out the rest of my contract, then I’ll move on to boxing. Or, “I don’t want to do MMA anymore. I don’t want to do it because the money isn’t good.” Then he just walks away. You are given choices. I’m a black and white kind of person, right? He signed and has five fights left on his contract. Maybe he didn’t think he was going to win (against Chimayev), and now he’s stuck in a position where he’s not making the kind of money he thought he was going to make. I don’t know.”
Johnson then explained that if Strickland didn’t want to fight anymore, he thought he could just walk out the door.
“He can say, ‘Guys, I don’t want to fight anymore.’ Money is bullshit. I want to make more money in boxing. You have seen what Francis (Ngannou) has done. He has made a lot of money. I want to do the same thing. You know what, UFC? I’m giving away the belt right now. I don’t want to do mixed martial arts, I don’t want to fight anymore. Take the belt, someone else can fight that ass for the money. Let me know when I can box and earn real money. Why can’t the conversation be like this in public? That’s how easy a conversation should be. It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out thing. It just might be, this is what I want to do, this is why, here are my numbers. Here are my numbers guys. That’s what I’m doing right now. Do you think that is (enough)?”
Oh yeah, everyone remembers how easy it was to get Francis Ngannou out of his UFC contract so he could box. And we all remember how supportive the UFC was in all of this and how Dana White to this day has no hard feelings about it and doesn’t. try to thwart or sabotage Ngannou’s efforts.
When he fought, Johnson was among the elite because of his performance in the cage. He was also the rare fighter who received overwhelmingly positive attention from fans as a great fighter and a seemingly great guy. Does Johnson feel his good guy reputation has anything to do with his overwhelming payouts as a fighter? If so, these hot turns will help him get more traction in the content creation business.