UFC 330 payouts: what Makhachev, Dern and every fighter made
UFC 330 payouts and bonuses from Philadelphia: four $100,000 awards, $832,000 in verified money, and what we estimate Islam Makhachev and Mackenzie Dern earned.
UFC 330 put $832,000 of countable money on the table in Philadelphia on Saturday night, and $500,000 of it was bonus cash. Four fighters collected $100,000 Performance of the Night awards, four more picked up the $25,000 finish incentive, and the two people who left with belts collected neither.
That $832,000 is the floor, not the payroll. It is what we can verify: the promotional guidelines compliance pay every fighter receives by tenure, plus the post-fight awards. Actual purses are not disclosed for this card. Pennsylvania does not publish fighter pay the way Washington, Georgia and California still do, so the base money stays private. The live table for the card sits at UFC 330 payouts.
Who won the UFC 330 bonuses?
Photo: MMAnytt / CC BY 3.0
Since UFC 324 in January the awards pay $100,000 and every finishing win that does not collect an award earns a separate $25,000 finish incentive. The two do not stack.
| Fighter | Award | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Jeremiah Wells | Performance of the Night | $100,000 |
| Charles Johnson | Performance of the Night | $100,000 |
| Dustin Stoltzfus | Performance of the Night | $100,000 |
| Jalin Turner | Performance of the Night | $100,000 |
| Neil Magny | Finish incentive | $25,000 |
| Lucas Fernando | Finish incentive | $25,000 |
| Donte Johnson | Finish incentive | $25,000 |
| Esteban Ribovics | Finish incentive | $25,000 |
No Fight of the Night was handed out, which is the third time in 2026 the promotion has split the money four ways into Performance awards instead. It is a fair read of the night. There were seven finishes and not one competitive three round war.
UFC 330 payouts: what every fighter made
Compliance pay runs on tenure: $4,000 for one to three UFC bouts, $4,500 for four to five, $6,000 for six to ten, $11,000 for eleven to fifteen, $16,000 for sixteen to twenty and $21,000 from twenty-one on, with $32,000 for a title challenger and $42,000 for a champion. Those tiers are the program as reported by MMA Junkie, and they are the only per-fighter money we can put a name to.
Main card
| Fighter | Result | UFC bouts | Compliance | Bonus | Verified minimum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Islam Makhachev | W, UD | 19 | $42,000 | none | $42,000 |
| Ian Machado Garry | L, UD | 12 | $32,000 | none | $32,000 |
| Mackenzie Dern | W, UD | 17 | $42,000 | none | $42,000 |
| Gillian Robertson | L, UD | 21 | $32,000 | none | $32,000 |
| Jalin Turner | W, KO/TKO R1 | 15 | $11,000 | $100,000 | $111,000 |
| Kaue Fernandes | L, KO/TKO R1 | 5 | $4,500 | none | $4,500 |
| Dustin Stoltzfus | W, SUB R2 | 11 | $11,000 | $100,000 | $111,000 |
| Mansur Abdul-Malik | L, SUB R2 | 6 | $6,000 | none | $6,000 |
| Esteban Ribovics | W, KO/TKO R2 | 8 | $6,000 | $25,000 | $31,000 |
| Edson Barboza | L, KO/TKO R2 | 33 | $21,000 | none | $21,000 |
Prelims and early prelims
| Fighter | Result | UFC bouts | Compliance | Bonus | Verified minimum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chidi Njokuani | W, UD | 11 | $11,000 | none | $11,000 |
| Joel Álvarez | L, UD | 12 | $11,000 | none | $11,000 |
| Charles Johnson | W, SUB R3 | 16 | $16,000 | $100,000 | $116,000 |
| Eduardo Chapolin | L, SUB R3 | 1 | $4,000 | none | $4,000 |
| Donte Johnson | W, KO/TKO R1 | 3 | $4,000 | $25,000 | $29,000 |
| Eric McConico | L, KO/TKO R1 | 5 | $4,500 | none | $4,500 |
| Tresean Gore | W, UD | 8 | $6,000 | none | $6,000 |
| Vicente Luque | L, UD | 26 | $21,000 | none | $21,000 |
| Lucas Fernando | W, KO/TKO R3 | 1 | $4,000 | $25,000 | $29,000 |
| Rafael Tobias | L, KO/TKO R3 | 2 | $4,000 | none | $4,000 |
| Neil Magny | W, KO/TKO R2 | 38 | $21,000 | $25,000 | $46,000 |
| Ramiz Brahimaj | L, KO/TKO R2 | 10 | $6,000 | none | $6,000 |
| Jeremiah Wells | W, SUB R3 | 8 | $6,000 | $100,000 | $106,000 |
| Myktybek Orolbai | L, SUB R3 | 7 | $6,000 | none | $6,000 |
Compliance pay accounts for $332,000 of the total. Bonuses and incentives account for the other $500,000. Read that ratio again: on a pay-per-view card headlined by two title fights, more than half of all the money we can name came from discretionary awards handed out after the fact.
What were the purses? (our estimate)
The base purses are the part nobody publishes, so here is our estimate of what these contracts pay. These figures come out of eighteen years of commission-disclosed purses, they are estimates rather than reporting, and they land within about 30 percent of the real number in the large majority of cases. Every fighter's page carries the full band.
- Islam Makhachev: we estimate about $776,000 to show, in a range of $562,000 to $1.07 million, most likely on a flat champion's purse with no separate win bonus. Treat that as a floor. Post-2021 disclosures never captured pay-per-view points or side letters, and a welterweight champion headlining a numbered card has both.
- Mackenzie Dern: we estimate about $414,000, in a range of $300,000 to $571,000, also on a flat structure.
- Ian Machado Garry: we estimate about $170,000 to show with a matching $170,000 win bonus, which he did not collect. A title challenger's night at UFC 330 was, by our estimate, worth roughly $200,000 to the loser and roughly $370,000 to the winner.
- Gillian Robertson: we estimate about $95,000 to show plus an equal win bonus that stayed unpaid.
- Edson Barboza at about $132,000 and Vicente Luque at about $137,000 were, by our estimate, the two best paid fighters on the undercard, and both of them lost.
- Jeremiah Wells: we estimate about $74,000 to show, plus the same again to win, plus $6,000 compliance, plus the $100,000 award. The opening fight of the broadcast paid better than the co-main event did for the challenger.
How much did Islam Makhachev make in total?
Verified: $42,000. Estimated: somewhere around $818,000 once the compliance tier is added to our estimated show purse, and comfortably more than that in reality, because the numbers above cannot see pay-per-view revenue, a champion's share of it, or whatever was negotiated when he moved up to welterweight to fight Jack Della Maddalena last November.
He landed seven takedowns and held 12:30 of control to keep the belt. By our estimate he is the eighth best paid fighter on the active roster before a single pay-per-view point is counted, behind Justin Gaethje, Sean Strickland, Alexander Volkanovski, Charles Oliveira, Ilia Topuria, Carlos Ulberg and Alex Pereira. What none of that captures is the part that makes him valuable to the promotion: 17 straight wins, and titles in two divisions the company can sell without spending a dollar building a story.
Why don't we know the exact purses?
Because almost nobody makes them public any more. Nevada stopped releasing them around 2018, and the states that still do (California, Washington, Georgia) are a minority of the calendar. Pennsylvania is not one of them. What is left is compliance pay, which is public because the program is public, and bonuses, which are announced from a podium. Everything else is a private contract between a fighter and a promotion that has no obligation to tell you what is in it. We went through what a decade of the disclosures that do exist actually showed in this piece, and the answer was bleak: half the roster under $25,000 a fight.
One last receipt. Jeremiah Wells has now been in eight UFC fights and this was his first post-fight award. He entered the cage as roughly a plus 900 underdog in the opening bout of the night, got taken down four times, was controlled for 6:20 of a 15 minute fight, and submitted Myktybek Orolbai with 3:36 left in the third. His verified $106,000 is two and a half times what either champion banked on paper, and he earned it in the first fight on the free stream, hours before anyone bought the pay-per-view.