Bellator 266 Fighter Salaries: Yoel Romero banks largest payday

The Bellator 266 fighter salaries have been officially released to the public, and light heavyweight Yoel Romero banked the largest payday.

MMAjunkie.com was the first to report the salaries for Bellator 266 after obtaining the information from the California State Athletic Commission. The highest-paid fighter on the card was Romero, who took home $150,000 flat for his split decision loss to Phil Davis in the main event of Bellator 266. Despite the fact that Davis was the one who won the fight, he received only $100,000 for the victory. That’s because Bellator has a flat pay system for many of its top fighters and not the traditional show and win bonuses for them. So in the case of Romero and Davis, they would have been guaranteed those purses win or lose.

While Romero and Davis ended up making big bucks, they weren’t the only fighters on the card to do so. Welterweight veteran Neiman Gracie scored a $100,000 payday for his brutal first-round knockout win over Mark Lemminger, who earned $40,000. Again, Gracie was on a flat pay deal so he was always going to come away with a new payday win-or-lose.

Going through the rest of the card, there were a number of other fighters who made in the mid-five figures for their fights, which is a solid payday for an undercard MMA fighter these days. However, many of the early preliminary card fighters only made four figures for their fights, which is obviously very low for a major MMA promotion to be paying their fighters. So while it’s good to see Romero and Davis get paid, it’s still tough seeing some of the Bellator fighters walk away with only $1500 for their fight, a purse which seems really low for a major MMA promotion.

What do you think about the purse that Yoel Romero is making in Bellator now?