While many fighters and fans felt CM Punk’s $500,000 reported fight purse, believed to only be a percentage of his overall earnings for his fight at UFC 203 this month was a ridiculous amount to pay for a fighter making his professional MMA debut, his opponent, Mickey Gall was not one of them.
Gall, who only earned $15,000 to show and $15,000 to win for his purse at UFC 203, claims that Punk was worth every penny of his reported fight purse — and then some. The rising UFC prospect explained this line of thinking during his recent discussion with Ariel Helwani on the most recent episode of “The MMA Hour” at MMAFighting.com.
“It’s cool,” Gall said. “He’s a superstar. There’s a reason why he’s there. Without him, I’m not in that spot, either. It’s cool. It’s all good. I’m not mad at that, no way.”
Although Gall will now move on from the CM Punk situation, as he did his part by soundly defeating him in a one-sided fight that didn’t make it out of the first round, he was also one of few to defend Punk’s statements about not being done with the fight game. Gall explained to Helwani why Punk absolutely served a purpose in his one fight, and why he could do it all over again if the “powers that be” were to green light a second Punk fight.
“I think a lot of people were interested,” Gall said. “It brought a lot of WWE fans to watch, a lot of guys who wouldn’t have been watching who like the violent stuff, who like this type of action, it brought them over. I had a lot of people contact me to say, ‘I watched this fight for Punk and I’m an MMA fan now.’ I think it worked. I think it was a smart move and I think it worked.”
Gall was right on the money with that statement, as early pay-per-view estimates have UFC 203 between 425,000-475,000 buys, with industry insiders crediting Punk for 125,000-225,000 of those orders.
As far as Punk wanting another fight, his Roufusport head coach out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Duke Roufus recently spoke out about that subject, and indeed claimed that he expects Punk to enter some Jiu-Jitsu Tournaments and possibly a compete second pro MMA fight.
For video highlights of CM Punk’s MMA debut against Mickey Gall at UFC 203, click here.
