Dana White has sparked outrage among fans online after he was seen gifting a YouTuber a huge stack of notes – $250,000 to be exact.
YouTubers and die-hard MMA fans the Nelk Boys are regularly seen sitting octagon-side at UFC events to show their support (yes, they're the lads who throw their shoes and a beer to Tai Tuivasa during his iconic shoeys).
It's understood the Nelk Boys have a good relationship with the UFC, bringing a new set of eyeballs to the sport with their various videos as well as promote brands that White owns.
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So to somewhat return the favour, UFC boss White gifted Kyle with $250k in cold hard cash.
"Uncle @danawhite just gave me $250,000 for my birthday," Kyle said via social media, along with a clip of him opening a box to reveal the huge sum of money in a zip-lock bag.
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Firstly, jealous.
Secondly, those two must be pretty close to be casually dishing out gifts of that magnitude – no Lynx special packs unfortunately.
But for some social media users, they didn't see it that way and were left absolutely fuming after watching the short clip.
With the debate surrounding fighter pay continuing to be a hot topic, fans flocked to the comments section of the post to slam Uncle Dana.
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One person tweeted: "He ain’t paying his fighters like that."
While another added: "He just paid you more than he pays 90 per cent of his entire roster. LMAO."
As a third commented: "Meanwhile his employed fighters risk their lives for $30k."
Meanwhile, other outraged fans were quick to remind everyone that some fighters even work two jobs too.
Either way, people appeared divided by the video with most simply tagging their mates in amazement while some vented their frustrations.
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A number of current a former fighters have voiced their concerns with their pay cheques and White hasn't been afraid to address it.
“The reality is anybody who’s being critical outside of the fighters themselves don’t know anything anyway,” White told Manouk Akopyan.
“They don’t actually know what these guys are making. And the fighters don’t ever come out and tell you. There’s no gag order on any of these guys. These guys can come out at any time and tell you what they’re making. I have no problem with that. But they don’t, do they? No, they do not. So it’s sort of a Catch-22.
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“Fighter pay has continually gone up every year since we owned the business. Obviously, there’s been tons more opportunities with the outfitting policy, some of the sponsors that we’ve brought in that spend tons of money with the fighters too. There’s a lot of opportunity here for the fighters. And listen, there’s never gonna be a guy that’s coming out and saying, ‘Yeah, they’re paying me too much. They’re overpaying me. And all of these guys that are champions share in the pay-per-view revenue.
“Listen, if you don’t like it, go start your own MMA league and pay ‘em whatever you want to pay ‘em. This is mine and this is the way we’re doing it.”
Topics: Australia, MMA, UFC, Dana White, YouTube