Yesterday, when the news broke that UFC Bantamweight Champion T.J. Dillashaw was leaving Team Alpha Male for Elevation Fight Team, Dillashaw’s statement included a reference to how Elevation “offered me an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.” Well, last night on Stud Show Radio (the former Team Alpha Male Radio,also embedded above) he explained exactly what that means: Elevation will be paying him to train with them. In Dillashaw’s words:
Last time [for the second Renan Barao fight], I paid a lot of money, I had to put up a lot of money to do a fight camp. Now, Elevation Fight Team came to me and they want to pay me some good money to train with them. They’re offering to pay me to train, instead of me paying to train.
This sport is growing so much that that’s the way I feel like it should be. We’re professional athletes. I feel like I got treated better in college wrestling. I had a physical therapist on hand at all times, no matter what, when I was in college. And that’s not where MMA is at yet. Now these teams are catching up and putting money into it.
While a team and/or gym paying fighters is not necessarily a common practice, it’s not entirely unusual, either. The formation of The Blackzillians team was, as mentioned on the last season of The Ultimate Fighter, marred by accusations that Glenn Robinson paid fighters to jump from nearby American Top Team. Team Takedown, the home of Johny Hendricks, has a business model where they recruit top collegiate wrestlers, pay them a salary to train as well as their living expenses, and get 50% of their MMA earnings in return,
