Here’s what was waiting for me in my feed reader this morning:
I don’t know if this is a Google Reader problem or a Yahoo! problem, but none of my other feeds do this, so I’m presuming Yahoo! still has some work to do.
Following up on my post about how not making weight may have been a good move for Gina Carano, I have some questions about the kind of reasoning Kaitlin Young had to do.
There’s been a lot of talk about how “the fix was in” for some of the fights at EliteXC Primetime. But what if it made more sense for a fighter to lose than to win? I don’t have any evidence, there’s no reason to suspect that anyone threw a fight, and until the payouts are released this is just idle speculation, but it’s an interesting thought exercise.
Stated simply: what if the 12.5% that Young got from losing to Carano was more than her win bonus?
The information about the deal that was worked out has been very vague, but it sounds like Young was to receive her base pay, her win bonus if applicable, and 12.5% of whatever Carano made. What we don’t know is if that percentage was of her fight pay, her win pay, or her combined pay, and this makes a huge difference. The way it was reported certainly sounded like the primary factor was Carano’s combined pay. We can safely assume that Carano is making more than Young, but how much is up in the air. But there’s a good chance that it was significant. Let’s try some math:
If Young was paid $10K to fight and $10K to lose, and Carano was paid $100K to fight and $100K to win, winning the fight would get Young $32.5K: $10K + $10K + $12.5. Losing would get her $35K: $10K + $25K. Now I obviously made those numbers up, but for a first time fighter and a headliner, that doesn’t sound too unreasonable. In fact, it might be a bit conservative.
But let’s play with the numbers: If Young were paid $4K/$4K - a reasonable amount - and Gina still made $100K/$100K, winning would get Kaitlin $20.5K, while losing would get her $33K. If Gina made $50K/$50K, the difference between winning and losing is $14.25K/$18.5K.
Obviously, it’s all more complicated than this. Winning has other consequences than just a bonus: more and better sponsors, higher pay for the next fight, and even a long-term contract are all worth something. But that all depends on how risk averse Young is. Would it be better to make an additional few thousand and risk tanking her career? Who can say?
This is of course not an attempt to say that Young threw the fight: she was clearly fighting very hard, and she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be motivated to risk her career for a few extra dollars. But there are fighters who have more bills and less scruples than her, and this kind of arrangement (large difference in fighter pay, penalties assessed as a percentage) is clearly a moral quagmire waiting to happen.
Organizations need to come up with a different way of arranging for these penalties, before this kind of problem becomes an issue. But again: this is all speculation. What do you think?
Originally posted on Bloody Elbow. Comments closed here.
I think a lot of people are missing something in the Gina Carano weigh-in scandal. Yes, she failed to make weight, but she also failed to try to make weight. 3.5 pounds (or 3 pounds depending on if the clothing rule is true) is a lot to lose at that weight (and yes, weight is a more difficult thing to manage for women in general - not being sexist, just being realistic), but she probably could have done it. Since she had the deal in place to trade those 3.5 pounds for an eighth of her purse even before she went to the weigh-in, she had time where she could have been cutting weight that she instead spent cutting a deal.
I’m guessing that the thinking went something like this: Carano could attempt the cut and end up weakened in mind and body which would mean risking her win bonus - and therefore a full half of her pay. Or she could save herself a miserable cut and just get to where she could on the scale but come in as fresh and strong as possible, all for an eighth of her pay. That means making 75% more than if she lost the fight.
And I’d call that a pretty savvy deal.
Yes, you can argue that it would be better for her to have made weight. But was that a realistic option? Should she have spent the limited training time she had focusing on sharpening up her striking and jiu-jitsu, or going on a crash diet? Now that we know the pressure she was under in having to agree to take this fight in order to keep her job with NBC, and recognizing that we don’t know everything else going on in her personal life that might have been affecting her weight, it’s easy to see that while the choice she made wasn’t ideal, it may have been the smartest economic move available to her.
Originally posted on Bloody Elbow. Comments closed here.