Among the many things that Gegard Mousasi likes about his new Bellator contract, judging by his recent remarks, is the difference in pay structure. The way the UFC typically does it? You get one sum for showing up and fighting and another, typically equal, sum for winning.

That means a win is worth twice as much as a loss to most fighters, a pay structure so common in MMA (and not just the UFC) that it largely goes unquestioned and unremarked upon.

But there are exceptions, and Mousasi isn’t the only one.

For example, at last weekend’s UFC 213, co-main event winner Alistair Overeem made an event-high $800,000 with no win bonus for his narrow majority decision over Fabricio Werdum.

Mark Hunt, another heavyweight who signed a new UFC contract when his iron was hot, made a flat fee of $750,000 for his knockout loss to Overeem at UFC 209. For Hunt’s fight against Brock Lesnar at UFC 200, both men had contracts that dispensed with the show money, netting Hunt a cool $700,000 for showing up while Lesnar made $2.5 million before fines related to his ensuing suspension for a failed drug test.

Even newly minted UFC interim middleweight champion Robert Whittaker made a set sum of $350,000 with no win bonus for his unanimous-decision victory over Yoel Romero at UFC 213. It reflected a marked improvement from the $30,000 to show and $30,000 to win he made roughly a year earlier.

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The advantages to the flat fee are fairly obvious. There are so many ways to lose in MMA, ranging from a legitimate knockout loss to a questionable stoppage or blatantly wrong judges’ decision, that having half your paycheck dependent on forces out of your control seems like poor financial planning. And those fighters who do negotiate flat fees usually end up getting more in show money than others do for show and win combined.

Of course, the show-win model actually works out quite well for promoters. It allows them to offer the idea of a better payday to people who naturally tend to be optimists about their own futures. If you promise a fighter $25,000 to show and another $25,000 to win, in his head he’s likely already spending the full $50,000, because of course he doesn’t step into the cage planning to lose.

But there can only be one winner in every fight, which means somebody’s payday is always half of what they were hoping for when they signed the contract. That’s money that stays in the promoter’s pocket, a guaranteed savings in virtually every fight.

Promoters will also tell you they like the incentive provided by the show-win model, but that explanation isn’t as simple as it sounds. For one thing, most fighters aren’t lacking for good reasons to try their best in any given fight. If concerns about keeping blood inside their body aren’t enough, there are the practical ramifications of defeat to consider. Winning is generally always better than losing when it comes to advancing a fighter’s career, and they know it.

In fact, including such a heavy financial penalty for defeat seems likely to be counterproductive for promoters, since it may make fighters more conservative in their approaches. Why take risks for the sake of exciting the crowd when a loss can mean the difference between a good Christmas for your kids and a dismal one?

Similarly, if you need to win to make the payout worthwhile, why stay in a fight if you’re sick or injured and don’t like your chances at victory? Why do that damage to your record, your future prospects, and maybe also your face, if it seems like you’ll be getting half pay for it in the end?

At the highest levels of combat sports, win bonuses have become something of a rarity. Jon Jones doesn’t get them. Neither does Conor McGregor. When Ryan Bader discussed his new Bellator contract, it was a key point he seized on.

At the star-studded UFC 200 event, four of the five winning fighters on the main card had contracts that did not include win bonuses. The lone exception was Jose Aldo, whose $100,000 win bonus made up a relatively paltry portion of his overall $500,000 payday.

Still, those on the lower and even middle tiers of the pay scale seem to have little choice in the matter. Their financial fates are still determined largely by who gets his or her hand raised. But if negotiating power were to shift, either due to a fighters association or some other unifying stance, that pay structure might be the first thing to change.

There are a lot of good reasons to want to know how much money you’ll make when you go to work at a dangerous and difficult job. There aren’t so many good reasons not to.

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