Floyd number 1, Messi 2, Ronaldo 3, Conor 4 and so on...........
There must be a misprint? I cant see Phil Heath's name anywhere??
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/06/05/the-worlds-100-highest-paid-athletes-2018-behind-the-numbers/#6999f49a4dd0
Phil does pretty well. Having talked to him about his DVD sales alone, I can't fathom him making under $1 million per year - yeah, that's not pro sport money, but he does well.
And it's probably safely over $1 million, pre-tax.
I think he was earning $400,000 from the Mr. Olympia prize money alone, plus another $400,000 with MuscleTech matching earnings. Are those figures accurate? If so, that is $800,000 in earnings just from the Olympia alone, up until the year when he parted ways with MuscleTech.
So Phil is doing just fine. It's sad that bodybuilders outside of the top 10 need to do things like personal training full-time in order to achieve an income - but Phil is doing just fine.
The UFC doesn't pay too much either. Georges St- Pierre was the biggest draw for years, and he only made $12 million in 2013, which was his highest-paying year. In his last fight [UFC 167, against Johny Hendricks], he earned $400,000 + $50,000 for having the Fight of the Night. That does not include bonuses from Pay-Per-View sales...but either way, he only made $12 million in 2013, which meant he took in $6 million after taxes, being here in Canada [I'm not sure how the tax situation works on that money, being that George lives in Canada, but was paid by an American company]. Rory MacDonald was #4 welterweight in the world, and was making something like $65,000 each fight. The reason why Rory went to Bellator because after training costs, he was barely making anything.
The big UFC payouts only started with Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor [I'm not sure the order there, but prior to them, it was a sport almost as poor as bodybuilding - Georges St-Pierre only won $6,000 for his first fight against Karo Parisyan [$3,000 for fighting; $3,000 win bonus] - that was in January of 2004.
I am told players in the Canadian Football League [CFL] get paid very little, and need to work in the off-season to make a living.
So yeah - all sports are poor.
