When Australian bantamweight Cody Haddon stepped into the octagon at UFC Macau on May 30, 2026, he departed with a second-round finish, a 9-1 professional record, and a very public appeal for his paycheck.
What did not survive the night intact was the shareable clip of his post-bout interview. The UFC moved quickly to copyright strike social media posts featuring his conversation with Michael Bisping.
Haddon, who earned his UFC contract through Dana White’s Contender Series back in August 2024 and went straight to the microphone to make his financial situation clear.
“I’m super broke. I have no money,” he told Bisping.
He was just getting started.
“Please! I deserve a bonus. I just came into enemy territory and put on a show like that.”
“You know when you book me to fig ht, I’m coming in to k*ll or be k*lled.”
“Please, let me be compensated. Thank you.”
The candor was refreshing, if also telling. Based on available figures, Haddon is reportedly earning somewhere around $10,000 to show and $10,000 to win, though the UFC has not officially confirmed those numbers.
With bonuses now worth $100,000 following the promotion’s broadcast agreement with Paramount+, a bonus decision carries enormous weight for someone at his pay level. The UFC also introduced a guaranteed $25,000 finish bonus for knockouts and submissions.
Dana White, for his part, has defended the organization’s pay structure while showing little patience for comparisons to other sports leagues.
A new collective bargaining agreement in the WNBA reportedly elevated the league minimum salary from $66,000 to $270,000 annually, a benchmark critics have used to argue UFC athletes are underpaid. White dismissed the parallel outright.
“Athlete pay has gone up every year, and it will continue to go up as long as we continue to be successful. But to compare it to the WNBA, that’s ridiculous,” he told Rolling Stone.
On the question of what newer competitors should reasonably expect at entry level, White acknowledged the logic behind a graduated approach.
“First of all, if you come into the UFC, let’s say you sign a three-bout deal, we’re going to find out if you even belong in the UFC. I should pay you $370,000 to see if you belong in the UFC?” he said.
He expanded on that reasoning: “The question becomes what do you pay somebody to come in and see if they’re good enough to be there.”
New entrants reportedly start on contracts in the range of $12,000 to show and $12,000 to win, with incremental raises tied to completed appearances. A competitor progressing through three bouts at $12,000, $14,000, and $16,000 could accumulate roughly $84,000 in guaranteed pay across those engagements, according to available estimates.
White has also drawn a distinction between how the UFC and boxing distribute event revenue across their respective cards.
“Meaning the guys obviously the top two people on a boxing card make all the money and the rest of the card makes nothing. Where as at the UFC, everybody makes money,” he said.
He cited the organization’s long history of paying its athletes above contract: “And the other thing that is a fact, since 2001 even in the days we were losing tens of millions of dollars, every athlete that ever competed for us was paid more than he was contracted to be paid.”
The organizational backdrop includes a $375 million antitrust settlement the UFC reached in 2025, resolving claims brought by former competitors who had contested between 2010 and 2017.
The lawsuit alleged that UFC contract terms had restricted athletes from pursuing deals with rival promotions, limiting their leverage in an already lopsided negotiating environment.
