About $1250 for a ref and $950 for a judge, according to NSAC chief Keith Kizer. Good work if you can get it. Kizer revealed this information during a conference call today regarding UFC 141 and Alistair Overeem. BTW, Mario Yamasaki will likely officiate that main event (Overeem vs. Brock Lesnar). How does one become a UFC referee or judge? Your guess is as good as mine. Try and guess where Bruce Buffer's other hand is, or why Mario Yamasaki's eyes are shut
meaning a ref or judge can be bought. im certain many matches have been fixed and that will be the ufc's downfall- legitimacy or the lack there of.
For the record I don't think any UFC fight has been fixed, at least in the Zuffa era. To men in the cage, one referee, all eyes on the center of the action--it is next to impossible for a referee to even make a slight mistake without everyone noticing and scrutinizing afterward, let alone showing bias or stopping a fight inappropriately. Especially since the direction of the fight can change in an instant unlike in basketball where 48-minutes have to be played. I don't think we'll see referee corruption in the UFC, knock on wood. The thing with judges--right now the qualifications to be a judge are very sketchy--supposedly the wife of a longtime boxing judge was given a job as an MMA judge as a professional courtesy from the NSAC--and we've seen enough examples of bad judging to make you wonder if there is an ulterior motive, but since only half of fights even reach a decision it seems that fight fixing would be an uphill battle in any way other than directly paying-off fighters. Which brings us to PRIDE FC in Japan, who had Yakuza influencing the business and picking winners. Mark Coleman vs. Nobuhiko Takada is probably the penultimate example of a fight that was more than likely fixed. But everyone knows it was fixed because it was obvious. You can take a dive in MMA but you can't expect people not to notice, especially if they've seen you fight before. The Fertitta's (owners of Zuffa, parent company of UFC) used their influence on the Nevada State Athletic Commission board to make sure the UFC wouldn't get sanctioned in the state, driving down the price of the company before they swooped in and bought it (sanctioning quickly followed). Their father also had corruption allegations. I don't know--the money involved right now is so highly predicated on performance rather than guaranteed paydays (championship boxing) or contracts (team sports). The fans will dictate which fighters they want to see.
