Friday, February 12, 2016

Benson Henderson opens up on move to Bellator


Benson Henderson recently did an interview with Newsday.com and talked about his move to Bellator. The interview is pretty detailed and he is not someone that has ever been shy about his opinions. If anything it was informative on how MMA fighters have to negotiate their terms for the work they do in the cage.

One of the things that made a "huge impact" on his decision to leave was the Reebok deal. If you listened to our podcast last fall, we had a financial analyst look at the deal and break down some numbers for the pay-outs. Henderson gave his own break down in his interview with Newsday and said he was losing out.
“That made a huge, huge impact on the deal. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t play into the deal. Reebok deal, we’ll see how it plays out, it’s playing out to mediocre fanfare so far. For me, I’m one of the fighters who lost out on a lot of money, a lot of money, when the rumors of the Reebok deal came out, and when it went into effect, I lost out on a lot of money," said Henderson when asked about the Reebok deal.
Henderson is a former champion so his options are a little better for sponsorship when not being held back by the tiers Reebok sets up.
"I was in the top tier, you can look it up in public records, the top tier for the Reebok deal is $20,000, so if I were to fight four times in a year at $20,000 is $80,000 in sponsorship money. So for a whole year I get 80K for wearing Reebok and that would’ve been over $100,000 I would’ve lost in that one year from the Reebok deal.”
Henderson fights his first bout at Bellator 153 in April against the current Welterweight Champion Andrey Koreshkov. You can read the full interview by following the link below.

Benson Henderson talks Bellator, UFC, conractual freedom and more| Newsday

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