Octagon icon Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson banked $7 million for his UFC 71 fight with Chuck Liddell
Octagon icon Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson made more money from one fight than most make throughout their entire mixed martial arts careers.
Challenging then-light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell at UFC 71 in May 2007, ‘Rampage’ caught ‘The Iceman’ on the chin with a vicious right hook just 90 seconds into the bout. Following it up with some ground-and-pound strikes, the contest was quickly called off and Jackson was declared the winner at the 1:53 mark of the very first round.
But it wasn’t just UFC gold that Jackson left with that evening. He also took home a big f*cking check.
“They gave me a crazy pay-per-view deal because they knew they weren’t going to do pay-per-view and then Dana White and the UFC bought my contract,” Jackson said on the JAXXON Podcast, referring to the UFC buying out his contract from the WFA in 2006. “So when I fought Chuck, I made millions. I made about $7 million on the Chuck Liddell fight. But then they figured out my pay-per-view numbers were crazy so my next fight when I fought Dan Henderson, was on TV. They didn’t want to give me pay-per-view.”
When ‘Rampage’ signed with the World Fighting Alliance he was entitled to a large cut of pay-per-views, though it was a non-issue for the promotion as WFA did not produce PPV events. However, when the UFC bought out Jackson’s contract along with other WFA assets, he was still entitled to the PPV percentage promised to him, which netted him $7 million from the Liddell fight — bonuses and sponsorship deals withstanding.
The buyrate for the Liddell fight was reportedly 675,000. With an average UFC PPV price of $40 at the time, that would mean Jackson was entitled to roughly 25% of the PPV revenue leaving 19% for the promotion as 56% automatically went back to the cable providers.
It’s no wonder why Jackson’s next fight aired on Spike TV instead of on PPV.
