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Originally Posted by MMA4EVERRR  I am one of those people that think leaking a fighter's financials sets a negative precedent.
If GSP is indeed making that kinda bank, it is largely in part to being Canadian. I dunno much about Canadian athletes outside of Gretzky and Bret Hart, but certainly they dont have the number of banakable guys like U.S. has. Brazil has many high profile soccer stars, as well as Europe does. And this is all due to the very limited number of popular sports in those countries.
Being a foreign born MMA fighter has a lot of advantages. A fighter can more easily represent his country, like GSP does for Canada, A.S./Shogun/Machida/Vitor/Wandy/Nogs/Aldo do for Brazil, Gustaffson does for Sweden, Bisping/Hardy do for U.K.
Guys like Jones, Edgar, Rampage, Hendo, Rashad will never attain that kinda stardom as the above mentioned guys largely due to the fact that MMA is still not popular than football, basketball, baseball in the U.S. These guys will never be bigger than the Mannings, the Tom Bradys, the Lebron James, the Pujols. All the hot, big money endorsement deals will go to athletes of popular sports.
What I'm saying is if a guy like Jon Jones wants to make GSP money, he wont, because he will never crack the top 10 of famed U.S. athletes, thus never being as bankable. |
There's lots of Canadians earning big coin in hockey. A guy like Sidney Crosby is probably raking in 15 million, sponsors included. He's a poster boy up here for pretty much everything. Lots of other players have multi-million dollar yearly salaries in the 5-10 Million range. Add in endorsements and they're doing pretty well for themselves. Outside of hockey perhaps a guy like two time MVP Steve Nash probably did well but I'm not a basketball guy so I can't comment further than that.
But agreed and make no mistake about it, GSP is the draw that he is because he's Canadian and is basically a coast to coast national icon. Georges' pay per view numbers are heavily padded by his Canadian fans. All this talk about an Anderson/GSP fight selling out a stadium forget that GSP has already sold out a stadium and could probably do it again up here.