Dan Miragliotta is taking heat from all sides this week. John McCarthy wants people to know what referees actually get paid.
Miragliotta’s stand-up of Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan at UFC Vegas 123 changed the course of the main event, and fighters, fans and commentators have piled on since. Speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show on Monday, McCarthy didn’t defend the call. But he did put a number on what referees take home.
I can’t tell you exactly, but Dan probably made $1,600 for that fight.
McCarthy, one of the most respected referees in MMA history, said his own pay never got much higher, according to Helwani’s post of the clip.
I’ll give you the truth. Every fight I ever did in the UFC, the most I ever made was $2,000. That was the last show I ever did in New York in 2017… I got $2,000 for that entire night.
Referees are paid by the athletic commissions that assign them, and the fee doesn’t change for a title fight. For comparison, fighters on their first UFC contracts typically earn $12,000 to show and $12,000 more for a win.
McCarthy said the low pay gets harder to accept with the abuse officials take, especially with betting now a major part of the sport.
Betting has become a huge part of the sport, and when people do things right, they’re still being called corrupt when they didn’t do anything wrong. They’re being abused. They have death threats. You can only take so much.
Eventually, when you’re making that kind of money and dealing with all of this, it absolutely has an effect. After a while, you start thinking, ‘This isn’t worth it.'
MOICANO LOSS REACTION! VOLK BEATS GAETHJE, BRIAN ORTEGA PREVIEW!
