UFC president Dana White has confirmed that number seven ranked welterweight Stephen Thompson will not receive his show money for UFC 291. Thompson withdrew from his scheduled fight with Michel Pereira after the Brazilian missed weight by four pounds. ‘Wonderboy’ made weight but decided that he would not take a catchweight bout with Pereira on the night.
Stephen Thompson Not Paid Show Money
After the Contender Series on Tuesday, White spoke to the media regarding the issue and confirmed Thompson would not be receiving his show purse. “You decided not to fight. The guy was three pounds overweight. You get a piece of his purse if you take the fight,” said White. “We also offered him another fight. There’s a much bigger story behind the scenes. No, you don’t just show up and say, ‘yeah, I’m not going to fight, I want a quarter of a million dollars’, that’s not how it works, hasn’t worked that way for anybody,” he continued.
Negotiation and Possible Resolution
The UFC president went on to say he intended to resolve the issue and offered some solutions. “So what we do is we try to get you another fight, try to turn you around quickly,” said White. “If you don’t turn around quickly, then we try to figure out what did it cost for your camp. We’ll reimburse you, there’s a lot of different ways that this gets worked out.”
White claimed that he is aiming to resolve the situation by the weekend. “You don’t just go ‘I’m not going to fight and no, I won’t take another fight two weeks later and pay me my show money’, that’s not how it works,” he said. “You don’t fight, you don’t get paid necessarily in the contract, but we always make sure that we take care of everybody and we’re working it out with ‘Wonderboy’ right now. This should all be worked out by Saturday.”
Quotes credit to lowkickmma.com
The MMA community will be hoping that the fan favourite Thompson will be compensated for his efforts.
Featured image credits to Embed from Getty Images
