This weekend Robbie Lawler defended his title for the second time picking up a split decision over Carlos Condit. The take home straight salary for Lawler was half a million dollars not counting what he made for bonuses, sponsorships and PPV cuts. This will breakdown what Lawler’s straight salad has done the last two years over the course of nine fights where he went 8-1/
UFC 157: This was his redebut to the UFC where he knocked out Josh Koscheck. One can assume he may have still been on the remainder of his Strikeforce contract, but he pulled in $105,00 overall with only $10,000 of that being a bonus due to the win.
UFC on Fox: Johnson vs. Moraga: He came back five months later to Bobby Voelker after two other fighters dropped out of the bout and he won by KO in the second round. He might have resigned a contract before this fight since he went to a traditional half of his salary coming from a win, but he got a bump in pay of $51,000 a jump of nearly 50% to $156,000.
UFC 167: He returned four month later to face off with Rory MacDonald where he won by split decision. His pay only jumped up $10,000 a jump of only 6.5% to $166,000.
UFC 171: He came back four months later, in his first main event, to face off, in a losing effort, against Johnny Hendricks for the title. He did not receive a raise at all for this fight and only took home $83,000 due to the loss.
UFC 173: He came back only two months later face off with Jake Ellenberger at UFC 173 where he won by TKO in the third round. He got a pay bump of $34,000 in this fight which is up 20% to a flat $200,000. 1.63
UFC on Fox: Lawler vs. Brown: He came back to fight again only two months later to headline UFC on Fox against the surging Matt Brown. This is only the second time he had fought off a PPV since returning to the UFC. Once again like UFC 167, he only bumped up $10,000 which this time was only a raise of 5% to $210,000.
UFC 181: He returned six months later, due to his opponents injury, to capture the title. He only received a pay bump of $10,000 a 4.7% to $220,000.
UFC 189: Lawler came back seven months later, after fighting so much, to rematch Rory MacDonald in his first title defense which eh won by TKO in the fifth round. This was the second biggest pay bump of his career, in the UFC, yet by getting an extra $80,000 which is 36% to $300,000 but is still on the half win bonus and half show money.
UFC 195: An injury to Lawler kept him out longer than expected and he faced off with former interim champion Carlos Condit and won by split decision as previously mentioned. Also, as said before he was given a flat rate, win or lose, of $500,000. That means that he jumped up $200,000 in his pay for defending his title a second time. This means he got a pay raise of a staggering 67%.
Obviously, we do not include his fight night bonuses, but he has been awarded five for $250,000, his Reebok sponsorship, as given by UFC, to champions is $40,000 and he has been awarded twice for a total of $80,000, the last part would be his PPV buy cuts.
Well, if we base his PPV cuts off someone we know, we will be using one of Eddie Alvarez’s contracts, he would make $1 for every PPV between 200,000 to 400,000, $2 for every PPV from 400,000 to 600,000 and $2.50 for ever yPPV buy over 600,000. This is a baseline and not authentic. We will also only use from he first time that he fought for the title, since that is where PPV buys came in considering he did not even get any pay bump even in a loss which came after a win.
UFC 171 pulled in an estimated 300,000 buys which would give Lawler $100,000 extra in pay.
UFC 173 did 215,000(estimated) which would only give an extra $15,000.
His next fight was on Fox so their is no ability to make extra money on that fight.
UFC 181 pulled in 400,000(estimated) buys which would give him an extra $200,000. It also had two title fights.
The Conor Mcgregor effect had him pulling in 825,000(estimated) buys for UFC 189 which would give Lawler which according to the level of buys he reaches the highest points to make with maxing out the first level for $200,000, the second level for an extra $400,00 and the last level had 225,000(estimated) buys over 600,000 buys which would give him $562,500 extra in pay. That would mean a grand total of $1,162,500 extra in pay.
UFC 191 is tricky considering that Lawler was headlining his own PPV without another title fight and a significantly weak main card. UFC 173 was headlined by a title fight between Renan Barao and TJ Dillashaw and was the lowest, but Lawler did not have a title. UFC 181 had an estimated 100,000 more PPV buys than 171, but was buoyed by another title fight. I say split it and say UFC 191 does 350,000buys which would give him an extra $150,000 in pay.
This means that Lawler would pull in a total of $1,637,500 for his esteemed cuts of PPVs, his Fight bonuses along with sponsorship is $330,000, and his straight pay for all nine of his fights has pulled in $2,140,000. This means in nine fights Lawler has made $4,107,500 and all of this is estimated. To put that in perspective, that is a little more than $456,000 a fight, straight pay is about 50% of that and for Reebok we will calculate a little different.
Lawler has made $80,000 for his Rebook sponsorship. That is only over his last two fights which he pulled in $800,000 in fight pay, $100,000 in Fight night bonuses and an estimated $712,500 PPV cuts. That means he made an estimated $1,692, 500 in total pay. That means Reebok has accounted for a little less than 5% of his pay as a champion!