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Brock Lesnar, win or lose versus Alistair Overeem tonight, is in a win-win situation—money-wise.
Lesnar, no matter the outcome of his main event fight, is set to earn and go home to Minnesota with $400,000 in his pocket, according to MMAfighting.com.
This booty is in addition to his UFC earnings, which, according to ESPN the Magazine in its May 2011 issue, already reached $5.3 million for the recent calendar year, including reported bout salaries and estimated pay-per-view bonuses. This makes Lesnar MMA’s highest paid athlete.
Now what does Lesnar bring to the Zuffa corporate table?
Of the top-five highest-selling UFC pay-per-views of all time, Lesnar was the main event of the top-two cards and three of the top five.
The UFC is now big business, and Lesnar is as big—literally—as any product comes, and he brings the bottom line.
Yes, his fame from his WWE days is a major factor to his popularity—or notoriety—but his exciting fights inside the Octagon also deserve credit.
He goes for the finish and fights to the finish. Any dissenter can volunteer anytime to last more than 10 seconds under Shane Carwin or Cain Velasquez’s ground-and-pound.
Business-wise, when return-of-investment has historically proven to be of more important than what is fair, Lesnar “deserves” and is worth every dollar he gets from the UFC.
Junk foods always sell. Hollywood action films with state-of-the-art special effects always have the upper hand in the box office compared to award-winning art films.
I still feel sorry for the underpaid Royce Gracie and the under-appreciated Jon Fitch, though.
But this is America.
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