Brendan Allen just got paid by someone other than the UFC. Content creator SteveWillDoIt, one of Dana White’s best-known friends, said Tuesday on social media that he has given Allen what Bloody Elbow reports is close to $200,000 as a performance bonus. The money comes through SteveWillDoIt’s partnership with the gambling company Gamdom and the Get Motion brand.
Steve didn’t exactly whisper it. “Congrats to my fighter Brendan Allen,” he wrote, adding that Allen had just gotten a Cadillac as a performance bonus. Then he made a recruiting pitch to other fighters, telling them that working with him, Gamdom and Motion pays off if you win. “Like no one will take care of you like me!” he posted. He also took a swipe at sponsors who spread money thin, saying Gamdom doesn’t hand cash to every creator out there and calling it the place to be long term for people who have motion.
The fight that earned it
Earlier this month Allen headlined a UFC Fight Night opposite Christian Leroy Duncan, and he did it sick. He fought through an illness and still won in the fifth round, which is about as late as a main event finish gets. According to Bloody Elbow, the win pushed him back into the top five at 185 pounds and may have moved him closer to a shot at middleweight champion Sean Strickland.
That’s where this gets interesting. After beating Duncan, Allen publicly sided with Strickland’s fighter pay campaign and said UFC fighters are underpaid, a stance Bloody Elbow noted could put his standing with the promotion at risk. Strickland, 35, signed a new contract earlier this year and still has several fights left on it. He has threatened to sabotage his future bouts over pay, and a renegotiation looks very unlikely.
Gamdom steps in, sort of
The Strickland dispute dragged the fighter pay fight back into the open, and Gamdom jumped in with an offer to pay every UFC fighter $10,000 a month as a sponsorship. SteveWillDoIt, who has a high-stakes deal with Gamdom, is now putting a very loud face on that offer with Allen as the poster child.
The White connection is hard to miss. Bloody Elbow reported that White won $2 million gambling alongside SteveWillDoIt in September and that White has been known to bail the influencer out of casino debt in Las Vegas. At UFC Edmonton this past Saturday, White held firm on Strickland, saying there’s nothing wrong with the champion’s contract because he signed a new one earlier this year.
My take: good for Allen. He went five rounds sick, found a finish, and then said out loud what a lot of his peers mumble. If a gambling sponsor wants to cut him a check the size of a nice used house, he should cash it the same afternoon. But the picture here is wild. The guy who parties at the casino with the UFC president is now the one rewarding a fighter who called the UFC’s pay short, while the president himself insists the champion’s deal is fine. The bonus went to Allen. The message went straight back to the company.
