Robert Joyner · @robnashville
28th Jun 2013 from TwitLonger
. @NateRockQuarry 's thoughts on sponsor tax issue are esp telling... The sponsor tax issue was one of my pet peeves when writing for MMAPayout and i was a pretty vocal critic of it at the time it hit the news and afterwards. The almost complete apathy of the broader MMA media at the time towards the UFC instituting the sponsor tax was one of the reasons i decided to take leave of being classified as a member of the MMA media or an mma journalist (that and mark cuban being kind of a douche.) Seeing a general ineffectualness from media members in the face of something that would have career and bottom line consequences for fighters gave me a real crisis of confidence in even having myself identified by others as "MMA Media". I don't know if other writers weren't able to conceptualize the end game of the sponsor tax or they just didn't give a damn as long as they were still getting their credentials and a nice buffet spread while covering the events.
Nate: When I started fighting for the UFC, I was told, well we can't pay you very much, but you can have any sponsors you want. Then it became you can't have conflicting sponsors. Then it became we need to approve your sponsors. Then it became your sponsors have to pay a tax so they can sponsor you and the UFC. Now these small companies that could pay a fighter $5,000 can't afford it anymore.
Nate gives an excellent summation of the mission creep of the UFC's sponsor policy over time and how it slowly but surely put a stranglehold on fighter's efforts and ability to attract sponsors. All the ballyhoo about clearing the decks of small timers so that the fighters could now be pursued by the blue chips that would surely flow in as a result of the sponsor tax is revealed now for the so much bullshit smokescreen that it always was....blindly spouted to justify the UFC's avarice in making a cash grab for one of the truly difference making financial aspects of earning a living fighting in the UFC. And What do you have now? A situation where lots of times on the undercard you have the ufc getting more in sponsor tax from the sponsor than the fighter is... something i predicted would end up happening and had a prominent MMA manager e-mailing about 9 months after the tax finally kicked in, saying that was indeed what was happening to his fighter.