The UFC handed out four $100,000 Performance of the Night bonuses after UFC 332 in Salt Lake City on Saturday. Roman Kopylov, Imanol Rodríguez, Damian Pinas and Johnny Walker took home the checks. The promotion announced the winners at the post-fight press conference, and MMA Junkie had the news up on X within hours of the last fight ending.
Here’s who did what. Walker knocked out Mick Parkin. Pinas needed 75 seconds to put away Andrey Pulyaev, which works out to roughly $1,333 in bonus money per second of work. Rodríguez took out Alden Coria in the first round, and Kopylov hammered Ateba Gautier. MMA Weekly ran its bonus story under the banner that first-round finishes banked big, and on a night like this the judges barely had to sharpen their pencils.
The numbers behind the payday are silly. The card had 14 bouts and 11 of them ended in finishes. According to MMA Weekly, UFC 332 set the promotion’s record for most knockouts at a single event, passing the previous mark from UFC Fight Night 258.
At the top of the card, Natalia Silva beat Wang Cong to win the vacant women’s flyweight championship, so the division has a new champion and Salt Lake City has a new spot in the record book. Silva’s name was not on the announced bonus list.
The bonus haul landed on a night when some in the media were already needling the promotion about pay. Before the checks were announced, Alexander K. Lee posted on X: “I really hope Dana White and the UFC stick it to us Negative Nancies in the MMA media by giving out fat bonuses to all of the winners tonight.” He followed it with “that’ll show us!” The UFC didn’t go that far. It went four deep. MMA Junkie also posted a breakdown of the event’s Promotional Guidelines Compliance pay, reporting that the headliners took home the most.
My take: 11 finishes and four bonuses means at least seven fighters stopped somebody on Saturday and went home without the extra $100,000, and I’d love to sit in on the meeting where they sorted that pile. Pinas getting paid for 75 seconds of labor is the best hourly rate in professional sports, and I say that as a man who once spent four hours handicapping a decision that ended in 38 seconds. Anybody who claims they had 11 finishes out of 14 on their card before the event is lying to you, and the record now belongs to UFC 332 until some Fight Night in a half-empty arena goes and breaks it.
