It’s a battle for money at the top of the UFC

The main event of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s pay-per-view card Saturday in Las Vegas will be the interim welterweight title fight pitting former champions Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre.

But a more serious battle is taking shape between the UFC and some of its elite mixed martial arts stars over money.

The fighters say the big-name competitors aren’t getting their fair share of the profits, and those at the lower end are simply underpaid. The organization’s president, Dana White, counters that UFC’s pay structure is more than fair, having made millionaires out of many fighters, and dismisses the complaints as a matter of a fighter being upset because another is making more than him.

The issue came to a head two months ago, when UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture announced his resignation, calling his decision “a matter of respect.”

“I don’t want to make a big deal of the money, but how do you show you respect an athlete?” Couture said at his resignation news conference in October. “How you pay him.”

Popular former light-heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz said recently there’s too great of an inequity between UFC’s profits -- a tightly guarded secret -- and what the organization is disbursing in fighter purses and bonuses.

“Like Randy, I want to make sure that the top guys get what we’re entitled to, and that the smaller guys get bumped up,” Ortiz said. “When I’m hearing the UFC made $42 million from my [December 2006] fight with Chuck Liddell, and that both me and Chuck got $1.5 million, I think we’re being cut out, and being taken advantage of.

“Now, Randy’s speaking out about it. Why should the company keep all the money? Why do they get the pie, and we get the crumbs?”

The 44-year-old Couture said he was motivated to resign because he felt “unappreciated,” despite signing a reported four-fight contract with the UFC this year. In March, he defeated heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia. Couture then defended the belt in August with an impressive third-round knockout of 29-year-old Gabriel Gonzaga.

In an unprecedented move, the UFC answered Couture’s well-publicized departure by making public the usually confidential total the organization has paid the fighter this year: nearly $2.9 million.

“We know what we’ve done for Randy, we know who we are,” White said of the split and the fighter’s request for an additional bonus that one UFC source placed at $500,000. “We’re running a business here. This is not ‘Fantasy Island.’ ”

Couture said he was frustrated the UFC couldn’t sign former PRIDE Fighting Championships heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko, who’s considered the top heavyweight in the world by some mixed martial arts publications.

Couture also said it was “the final slap in the face” to hear speculation the UFC had apparently promised to pay Emelianenko up to $2 million a fight, in excess of what Couture earns.

Emelianenko rejected the UFC’s advances, and signed with an MMA company in his native Russia.

A Couture spokesman said the fighter believes his UFC contract expires in summer 2008, but White responded that, “You don’t resign from a contract. It’s a four-fight deal, and we’re going to aggressively protect our rights.”

In an e-mail to The Times last week, Couture said: “I don’t intend to breach my contract but I do intend to see the Fedor fight happen. I think there are a lot of things [UFC] has done well to bring MMA to the point it is at. But there are a lot of things it can do better. I find myself in the unique position to not only make the Fedor fight happen and control my own destiny, but to potentially help the other fighters in our sport receive better treatment.”

White scoffed about how genuinely Couture cares about other fighters: “This whole [dispute] started because he was [upset] another guy was making more money than him.

“MMA is like a beauty salon, with all these [fighters] sitting around talking about what they’re not getting.”

By defeating Gonzaga, Couture earned $250,000, according to financial figures released by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The UFC reported Couture also was paid a $35,000 bonus for “fight of the night,” and is due to receive more than $780,000 in final pay-per-view percentages.

Other public financial figures from that night’s card at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas showed the UFC generated live-gate revenue of $3,307,790, and paid its 18 fighters $999,000. (Pay-per-view payments or other bonuses are not included in that total.)

Bonuses given to UFC fighters are discretionary, White said. Someone such as former light-heavyweight champion Liddell gets pay-per-view profits and is eligible for other bonuses, while former middleweight champion Rich Franklin had a deal in his Oct. 20 title bout that stipulated only $28,000 in guaranteed money, plus another $28,000 if he could defeat champion Anderson Silva. (He didn’t.)

In July, Hermes Franca received a guaranteed $14,000 for losing a hard-fought five-round bout to lightweight champion Sean Sherk, the California State Athletic Commission reported. A month later, lightweight contender Joe “Daddy” Stevenson earned $32,000 -- a $16,000 purse and $16,000 victory bonus -- in a three-round bout, according to the Nevada commission.

On the other hand, White said he and Lorenzo Fertitta were so thrilled when UFC champion Hughes defeated MMA legend Royce Gracie last year that they handed him a $1-million bonus.

Now, White is less patient with criticism of his company’s pay structure, and said in light of Couture’s departure, he’s eliminating the practice of giving signing bonuses because they complicate negotiations.

“We’ve got lots of millionaires who couldn’t be happier with their life,” White said. “Lots of guys have taken their money, invested it, and they’re thrilled with how their lives are turning out.”

Ortiz argues that veteran combat fighters such as him, Couture and Liddell have staged a series of entertaining battles that helped UFC’s parent company, Zuffa, operated by brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, emerge from debt and become a thriving industry, especially among the age 18-to-34 demographic.

“We’ve had to put our lives on the line, and now that we’ve seen the UFC making its money back -- and more -- we’re asking, ‘Where’s the money?’ ” Ortiz said. “Dana’s famous words are, ‘I’m going to make you the biggest superstar in the world,’ but they make great [dollar] numbers on their video games, merchandising, and DVDs of us fighting, and the fighters get none of it.”

White called Ortiz an “idiot,” and defended the UFC’s DVD and merchandise profits. This month, the Sports Business Journal reported UFC’s pay-per-view numbers slumped from 2006, causing the organization’s debt rating to be slightly downgraded.

It hasn’t helped that Couture is AWOL, and Sherk is in the final month of a six-month steroid suspension.

“Am I entitled to make some money?” White asked. “This is a business, and the business deserves to make money.

“These guys wouldn’t be putting their lives on the line if I hadn’t busted my [rear] to build this infrastructure, and Randy Couture wouldn’t be a millionaire now.”

Another factor in the call for more money is health concerns, say Couture and Ortiz.

Ortiz was positioned to have a rematch with unbeaten Rashad Evans in November in New Jersey, but he balked because he says he has been slowed by back pain since their July draw. Ortiz’s next fight will be the last on his current UFC contract, and the sides are in negotiations.

Couture said the UFC needs to consider providing “medical coverage outside the shows, like when we are in training. Those guys making $2,000 to $3,000 a fight who get hurt in training, that’s a shame.

“A fighters’ union is something that’s been discussed for a couple years. There’s almost this monopoly, but if the fighters could unite about issues such as these bonuses . . . there has to be someone in marquee stature to say he’s sacrificing everything, saying, ‘He can’t make me fight.’ ”

Boxing promoter Dan Goossen said the MMA fighters’ gripes are no different from the sometimes contentious labor negotiations in other sports.

“Success brings headaches,” Goossen said.

“MMA/UFC is just starting to feel the repercussions of its success. . . . You wouldn’t be having these arguments if the UFC was not so successful in its promotion.”

lance.pugmire@latimes.com