Chael P Sonnen has some potentially dismal news about the pay per view buys for the Golden Boy card which featured a main event of Tito Ortiz vs Chuck Liddell. Tito may have had a great night by knocking out Chuck Liddell in brutal fashion in the first round but the overall payday for the event may be much less than the 75,000 buys that Dave Meltzer predicted. If you follow Sonnen on social media he is often correct in his revelations about insider information.
Take a guess how many PPV’s Tito and Chuck sold. Winner gets a free Bad Guy Inc tee from https://t.co/cqrewKUiVo (Here’s a hint… go low… lower… lower… that’s it.)
— Chael Sonnen (@ChaelSonnen) November 28, 2018
That doesn’t convey the number of buys but through multiple channels he claims it’s an embarrassing 25,000. Both Chuck and Tito receive an estimated 30% of the gate and viewer purchases, according to Meltzer, meaning if Chael is correct then it is not in fact “the most money they ever made” in MMA. Sorry, Oscar that is not as true as you claimed days before the fight.
If the gate was $700,000 like Dave Meltzer has predicted and the 75,000 number of buys sticks it is still a very good night for Tito and Chuck. Taking their base salaries of $200K and $250K respectively, and adding it to the percentages they would take in for the ppv buys and the gate, the final numbers for them both sit around $1.3M a piece. If the buys stick at 25,000 this would most likely put them somewhere around $750K-$800K. Still not a bad night but definitely not the biggest payday for either of them.
Actual salaries they have received in the past for individual events disclosed to the public do not include bonuses, percentages, or other perks most of the time so it’s hard to verify the money claims other than what has been said through the media.
Who do you think is right? Sonnen or Meltzer.