What Ortiz is doing is echoing the thoughts many detractors have had about the UFC for some time now; namely, that the organization has a phobia about fighters becoming as big as the “brand”; that the fighters are not getting a proportionate share of the revenues that are generated by pay-per-view subscriptions, live gates, merchandising and sponsorships.

From what I understand, using figures from the Nevada State Athletic Commission along with what has been written and said, Ortiz’s basic purse for his fight with Chuck Liddell at UFC 66 was $210,000, and since reports are that Liddell received a base of $250,000 with bonuses that brought that figure to about $1 million, I’ll assume Ortiz made approximately the same.

But when you have a live gate of $5.4 million, along with one million buys on pay-per-view, which would have produced anywhere between $23-$27 million, that figure for two ballyhooed main event participants is chicken feed. Two championship boxers, under those same parameters, probably would have have made at least five times as much, maybe a lot more.

It’s not that Ortiz and others have too limited a mental capacity to understand what the relationship between revenues for the promoter and revenues for themselves should be.

I just think many of them have been a little late in coming around to it. That’s mostly because I figure a lot of them never dreamed they could ever make that kind of money when they started fooling around in a gym years ago, while even amateur boxers just starting out are well aware of the millions fighters like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield and Oscar De La Hoya have amassed in the ring.

I must admit that I have little idea as to what goes on “under the table” when it comes to paying the UFC fighters. But it is clear that it has no interest in disclosing too much about what it is making. Let me put it this way - after HBO PPV, which is the pay-per-view arm of the Time Warner-owned network, puts on a big fight, it will send a press release detailing what kind of numbers it did for the show. And if the event did nice numbers, you can’t avoid getting multiple press releases from those people, trumpeting their success. They WANT you to know how well they did; how much income was generated. And the promoters have back-end deals with some of the fighters, who seem to get a pretty good audit as to what the buy rate is. But the UFC conceals this information, as best it can. If there has been a press notice from the UFC regarding any of its pay-per-view productions, I’ve yet to see it.

If you’re following along, that should tip you off to something.

And that “something” is, OF COURSE the UFC does not want to open its books; OF COURSE it does not want the fighters to have a full understanding of how money is generated from all the revenue streams. And OF COURSE they don’t want the fighters to have representation that might enlighten them as to what the possibilities are.

If they did, fighters might flee like lemmings.

Looks like they’ve already started, doesn’t it?