Former Bellator featherweight and bantamweight champion Joe Warren will return to competition next Friday night in Texas as he will meet Sirwan Kakai in the co-main event of Bellator 161.

Warren (12-5, 1NC) is coming off a submission defeat in March against Darrion Caldwell and he will look to get back into the title picture in the Bellator bantamweight division when he meets Kakai, who is also entering this fight following a defeat as he lost to Joe Taimanglo in March.

Since his fight against Caldwell, Warren has started doing a weekly podcast with MMA play by play announcer Sean Wheelock and current ONE FC welterweight champion Ben Askren. On the most recent episode of that podcast, Warren discussed the current state of sponsor pay for MMA fighters in 2016 and I asked him on Wednesday to expand on those comments.

“Sponsorships a couple of years ago especially before the UFC signed Reebok, there was a lot of companies jumping on board,” Warren told The MMA Report. “They were paying the money to be on our shorts to use us as billboards. For us to make some extra cash during that fight. Now it has fell off. Maybe one or two sponsors for this fight that have actually even paid. I usually get somewhere in the ballpark between $5,000 and $15,000 on my pair of shorts. This time is more like $2,000 or something. It’s not even a factor so it’s sad. Sponsors turn and run on you. They are fair weather fans. A lot of them. They have kind of figured out that they are not getting any return on investment. Not being in that UFC cage and the Bellator cage is open though. It’s changed a little bit since — the last year and a half I think people have fell off or dropped off a little bit more.”

Take a listen to everything Warren said about sponsorship pay below and his complete interview with The MMA Report will be played on next week’s podcast.