Athlete Compensation Quotes

It's sad when a MMA fighter talks to an NFL or NBA player about how much money they make. That's embarrassing. You tell them how much you make and they laugh.

Everybody in the Olympics is paid. Lindsay Vonn is going to make a million dollars whether she skis or not.

The best football players in the world still earn very little money compared to people who really earn money.

I normally get paid tens of millions of pounds to fight and I ended up fighting for free. I don't like fighting for free.

If you're a highly touted free agent, you're going to get paid a lot of money no matter where you go.

Free agency is free agency. I love when NBA players get paid.

Maybe UFC and Bellator should take care of the fighters when their careers are done, as the NFL takes care of their players. Because they're making so much money off us.

In the NFL they talk about 'contracts,' but it's not really a contract, it's a one year agreement. If you have a 10 year contract, it means nothing. If you get cut in the NFL, you get nothing. People don't talk about that.

To be honest, I'm worth more than 12-14 million. Just for the things I do on the court that don't show up on the stat sheet. You don't find guys like that.

Look at guys like Demetrious Johnson, who's the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world. Why isn't he on the largest pay scale? Why are there people that aren't even champions making more money?

Today, you hit .230, and you get a million and a half and think you're underpaid.

The UFC isn't this whole glamor everybody thinks. They don't pay you right.

I think, in accepting the amount of money that athletes make, I think that fans accept that now. It's the nature of the beast; that's the way it is, so they understand it. All, I think, fans have changed - because the price of tickets has gone up so much - that they feel a certain sense of entitlement when they go to a game.

At the end of the day, does the UFC really like its fighters?

I do support college athletes and the opportunity for them to be paid a stipend.

I made more from sponsorship than I did from fighting. I did that for the longest time.

It didn't seem fair that no matter how many passes I caught or how many touchdowns I scored, I was considered a 'lowly tight end' and would never be paid anywhere close to a salary as high as the elite wide receivers.

I just feel that all the top fighters in the world are making all the money.

As soon as you take money for playing sport, it isn't sport, it's work.

Jimmy Connors plays two tennis matches and winds up with $850,000, and Muhammad Ali fights for one bout and winds up with five million bucks. Me, I play 190 games--if you count exhibitions -- and I'm overpaid!

You can't say that being a fan is more serious, because players are trying to do better in order to get paid better.

I think the healthier Bellator can be, the better it is for the entire sport, especially the athletes who - let's face it - need to be paid more. They need the opportunity to negotiate and have an option. Bellator definitely presents that.

Gosh, all a kid has to do these days is spit straight and he gets forty-thousand dollars to sign.

How's the game changed in my 15 years in the league? Well, we used to be called hard-working players. Now we're overpaid crybabies.

When it comes to holdouts, there's a presupposition that the player is some angry rebel who's defying authority and only cares about the money.