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Pro Wrestling is an incredibly lucrative business.
Whether it’s World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) or All Elite Wrestling (AEW), money essentially rains down from the sky. Fans bet on the outcomes to the tune of extremely large sums, and all the superstars are handsomely paid.
And yet, do the best of the best in pro wrestling really make all that much relative to other athletes? Never mind the NBA, NFL or MLB. They, along with so many other leagues, are a completely different genre of sport.
Mixed Martial Arts and Boxing are a different story. They are siblings to pro wrestling, in that the primary draw is the fight itself. And as it turns out, it pays to be a pro boxer or star in UFC.
Both sports take in more money from bettors. In the UFC specifically, we’re talking about millions upon millions of dollars wagered per fight. Similarly some of their stars pull in millions per event. Conor McGregor took home a base salary upwards of $3 million per fight. Professional boxers, meanwhile, take home even less when breaking down their salaries per match.
In comparison, the biggest names on the professional wrestling circuit fall somewhere in the middle. Brock Lesnar, of WWE, is this year’s highest paid name. He’s taking home a total of $10 million for the entire year. That’s a nice chunk of change, albeit not quite in line with what the top MMA fighters earn for each fight.
This shouldn’t come as a major surprise. Pro wrestlers usually sign one-size-fits-all contracts. They’re getting a lump sum for competing on what can sometimes be a crowded slate. Lesnar, for example, fought in eight matches during the 2019 season—which is on the low end for someone in the WWE.
What’s more, most pro wrestling salaries already include all extracurricular earnings, like the money each big name is owed from ticket and merchandise sales. It doesn’t work that way in UFC and boxing. Participants can, in some cases, be entitled to a larger slice of the gate revenue, mainly the money earned from Pay-Per-View.
Cash generated from the latter can be quite lucrative. Take McGregor. His $3 million base salary ended up representing only a fraction of his total profit in 2019. In fact, he wound up earning around $47 million after factoring in all the money that he generated from box office. And everyone remembers that Floyd Mayweather was able to parlay his fight in the ring against McGregor into a $275 million windfall.
Those who work for the WWE and AEW don’t have that luxury. They are, for the most part, indentured to their contracts. A select few, like John Cena and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson go on to make obscene amounts of cash through sponsorships and movie careers, but they represent the overwhelming minority. Most pro wrestlers, in contrast, are earning a lion’s share, if not all of their money, through their contract salary.
But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The top pro wrestlers have a certain financial security that most boxers and MMA fighters do not enjoy.
In 2019, for instance, the 10th-highest paid WWE star was Braun Strowman. He took home around $1.9 million for the season. And this is guaranteed money in most cases. By comparison, the median income for UFC fighters as recently as 2018 was under six figures, checking in at around $68,500, according to the MMA Guru.
Indeed, as with any professional sport, pro wrestling is most financially rewarding at the top. The thing is, there’s more room at the top in the WWE and AEW than in boxing and UFC, where only a select few populate the apex.
Beyond that, the average face in pro wrestling is more recognizable to the public eye. Many fighters are doing weekly traveling shows, in addition to the Pay-Per-View events. Boxers and UFC members only schedule a handful of matches per year. That limits their appeal as brand ambassadors for major companies, unless, again, they’re one of the half-dozen or so to stars.
So yeah, it can pay to be in the UFC, or to be a professional boxer. But there is more security to be had in the WWE and AEW, along with far more seven-figure salaries available