Over the weekend, the most-discussed exit ramp for the UFC middleweight champion was a man hitting a heavy bag with a massive snake wrapped around it. That clip of Jake Paul made the rounds on X, and the account Spinnin Backfist summed up the reaction by simply asking why. It’s a fair question for the snake. It’s a better question for the idea that Sean Strickland’s way to a fair payday runs through Paul.
Jorge Masvidal has an answer. The former BMF champion came to Strickland’s defense this week, and MMA Junkie reported his position plainly: in Masvidal’s view, boxing Jake Paul shouldn’t even be an option for Strickland. Masvidal is right, and the reason he’s right has very little to do with Paul and almost everything to do with how the UFC is built.
What Strickland actually said
The biggest story in MMA last week had nothing to do with UFC Vegas 122. Strickland, the reigning middleweight champion, went after the promotion over fighter pay and threatened to walk away from his title, according to MMA Fighting’s weekly mailbag. That’s a champion, holding the belt, telling the company that signs his checks that the checks aren’t enough.
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The mailbag laid out the trap he’s in. Allegedly, the UFC would only let Strickland fight for the title if he signed a new six-fight contract. He signed. That leaves him locked in for five more bouts, and the promotion controls who he fights, when, and where. His choices, as MMA Fighting framed them, are to sit out or to say yes. Neither one pays him more.
The column also floated the plan Strickland teased, which amounts to making himself so ugly to deal with that the UFC lets him go. The writer was skeptical, and so am I. If a fighter could talk his way out of a contract, every disgruntled name on the roster would grab a microphone the next day. The mailbag named Paulo Costa specifically as one who’d follow.
Why the Paul fight is the wrong conversation
Here’s where Masvidal’s point lands. When the only fantasy payday anyone can picture for a UFC champion is a crossover boxing match with Jake Paul, the problem sits upstream of Paul. MMA Fighting cited the familiar number: the UFC pays fighters somewhere around 18 to 20 percent of revenue. The column called that a pittance next to other major sports leagues, and pointed out that Dana White likes to say the UFC is competing with the NBA and the NFL. Those leagues don’t send their champions shopping for a YouTuber to get a raise.
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The Paul option is also mostly imaginary. The same mailbag said flatly that the UFC has zero interest in letting Strickland go box or fight Paul. So the crossover keeps coming up as a pressure valve that doesn’t actually open. Fans talk about it because it’s the one door in the room with a number attached, even if the door is painted on the wall.
Meanwhile, Paul’s world keeps spinning on its own schedule. Most Valuable Promotions posted on Sunday that after Lucas Bahdi and Floyd Schofield went to war on its card, Paul praised both men’s heart and said he wants to see the rematch down the line. He’s running a boxing business. A middleweight champion’s leverage problem with the UFC is not his to solve, and it shouldn’t be.
Costa, who knows something about pay disputes and about the Paul family, poked at all of it on X. He wrote that he sparred Logan Paul in boxing five years ago and “it wasn’t a real fight,” then asked whether Jake is better. On a separate post quoting a clip captioned “Sean Strickland needs his money,” Costa joked, “When exactly this happened? I’ve been at pi all the time and missed it.” Costa is being Costa. The jokes still point at something real, which is that the guys with grievances are watching Strickland closely.
The part Masvidal gets exactly right
Masvidal’s framing does something useful. It refuses to treat a boxing match with Paul as the reasonable compromise. Strickland is a UFC champion who did what the company asked to earn his shot, signing a six-fight deal to get it. The fair pay conversation belongs inside the UFC, at the negotiating table, with the revenue split on the paper in front of everyone.
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The mailbag’s bleakest line was that the UFC calls fighters “private contractors” and intends to keep it that way, and that real change like pensions only comes if fighters organize. That’s the honest backdrop to all of this. Strickland yelling won’t fix the split, and neither will a snake on a heavy bag.
What Strickland has right now is a belt and five fights left on a contract he signed to get it. That’s the number that matters, and nobody named Paul is going to change it.
