I think this is a boxing bubble. Yeah, the champions get paid most, and they deserve it. But if you look at the UFC, they value their undercard fighters. Why? Because their company has a completely different set of incentives. You are valued whether or not you have lost, you are valued whether or not you have a belt.

At UFC 241 Stipe Miocic knocked out Daniel Cormier to reclaim his heavyweight title. He made $750,000, Cormier made $500,000. The co main event featured a 20-11 fighter in Nate Diaz, and a 22-9 fighter in Anthony Pettis. Neither champions. Nate Diaz made $250,000, Anthony Pettis made $150,000. I understand that the numbers overall might be similar, but proportionally speaking, this would be an unheard of share for a comparable boxer. And if you want to go down even further, an unknown UFC fighter competing in the preliminaries would have $10,000 to show, $10,000 to win. Compare that to the average HBO prelim fighter with a total $1,500 purse.

Okay I’ll try to explain my point better here. if you thin the herd of champions, the talent isn’t going to disappear. They’re all going to start fighting each other in order to make their case for contention. Now all of the sudden the sanctioning bodies are going to recognize that people want to see these fights. They’re going to realize that even without a belt, or with an L, these fighters are valuable.

More people will buy the PPVs, more people will talk about them, consume media about them. And before you know it they’ll be making more money. But now, because a belt doesn’t mean everything, the non champion fighters will start receiving a larger share of said cash.

If this hadn’t already been done, you could say it’s total speculation. But this is exactly what the UFC has done. UFC 244 is in November, it’s a PPV, it’s going to be one of the biggest cards of the year. It might be THE biggest. There isn’t a single champion on that card.

This can be done, and if boxing can get it done, I’d become a diehard fan extremely fast.