Kamaru Usman propelled himself into the pound-for-pound conversation and he made a whopping $1.5 million in the process.
The Nigerian Nightmare knocked out Jorge Masvidal in the main event of a crazy UFC 261 card and bagged an extra $50,000 as a result with the Performance of the Night bonus.
Usman knocked out Masvidal to retain his welterweight title
Masvidal took home $800,000 from the loss and he made half a million dollars just to be there.
Given that these two drew the seventh highest bought UFC PPV of all-time at UFC 251, there was never a doubt that their pay would be higher for this one.
That raked in 1.3 million buys.
UFC 261 did more than 700,000 on ESPN alone and that’s a good domestic number.
International numbers have not been figured in yet but one has to think they have a good chance at cracking one million buys.
For context, UFC 259 (Jan Blachowicz vs. Israel Adesanya) did 800,000 buys worldwide (600,000 domestic), while January’s UFC 257 (Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier) did 1.6 million buys worldwide (1.2 million domestic).
Interestingly, Chris Weidman would earn $420,000 despite breaking his leg in just 17 seconds of his fight.
UFC have taken care of him and Dana White has personally gone to expense to ensure his travel home is comfortable.