WEC 34 fighters salaries: Faber, Pulver and McCullough top earners

Originally posted by MMAjunkie.com Staff on Jun 02, 2008 at 6:29 pm ET

WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber scored the biggest win of his career at Sunday's WEC 34 event, and he earned an event-high base salary of $44,000 in the process.

MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) today received the list of official salaries for the event, which took place at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, from the California State Athletic Commission.

Other top earners included Faber's opponent, Jens Pulver ($33,000), as well as Rob McCullough ($32,000) and WEC bantamweight champion Miguel Torres ($28,000).

The total disclosed payroll for the event was $260,000. The average salary was $11,818.

The full list of salaries included:

Urijah Faber ($44,000) def. Jens Pulver ($33,000)
Miguel Torres ($28,000) def. Yoshiro Maeda ($6,000)
Mark Munoz ($16,000) def. Chuck Grigsby ($3,000)
Rob McCullough ($32,000) def. Kenneth Alexander ($3,000)
Donald Cerrone ($10,000) def. Danny Castillo ($3000)
Mike Brown ($10,000) def. Jeff Curran ($10,000)
Will Ribeiro ($6,000) def. Chase Beebe ($7,000)
Tim McKenzie ($12,000) def. Jeremy Lang ($4,000)
Alex Serdyukov ($6,000) def. Luis Sapo ($3,000)
Jose Aldo ($6,000) def. Alexandre Franca Nogueira ($8,000)
Dominic Cruz ($6,000) def. Charlie Valencia ($7,000)
All of the winning fighters received "win bonuses" that doubled their salaries. For example, Faber earned a base salary of $22,000 and got an additional $22,000 for the victory. Had Pulver pulled off the victory, he would have been the event's highest-paid fighter with a $66,000 payday.

Now, the usual disclaimer: the figures do not include deductions for items such as insurance, licenses and taxes. Additionally, the figures do not include money paid by sponsors, which can oftentimes be a substantial portion of a fighter's income. They also do not include any un-reported "locker room" bonuses that organizations sometime pay. In other words, these are simply base salaries reported to the CSAC and do not represent the total amounts earned by each fighter.

In the night's main event, Faber scored a shutout unanimous-decision victory over Pulver in what was billed as the biggest fight in WEC history -- and perhaps, the biggest featherweight fight in MMA history. For more on the event, check out our "WEC: Faber vs. Pulver" recap.