Conor Benn signing with Zuffa Boxing continues to shake up the combat sports world. Although the move isn’t directly affiliated with MMA, UFC stars like Michael Page have been left scratching their heads.
Benn stunned many this past weekend by inking a one-fight deal with Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing reportedly worth at least $15 million. It’s a eye-catching price tag for an athlete who has never won a world championship, and one that immediately makes the 29-year-old Englishman one of the highest-paid — if not the highest-paid — fighters under the TKO umbrella, with includes the UFC.
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Page, 38, has been around the game for a long time, and he admitted Tuesday on “The Boys in the Back” that he isn’t exactly thrilled to see the eye-popping figures being spent by White’s new venture.
“[Benn’s signing is] not something that I’m happy about,” Page told Uncrowned. “What I would say is when the announcement of the Paramount, big-money partnership [with the UFC] came, people were asking me, ‘Are you excited about this?’ And my answer was, ‘Well, what does this mean for the fighters? Until we understand how that’s going to translate to the fighters, there’s nothing to really be excited about.’ Then I heard about the, if you want to call it an increase in, [UFC] bonus structure.
“This is why I wasn’t bothered to be excited initially. Because for me, that doesn’t do enough comparatively to the amount of money that they’ve just brought in for themselves. … Then to see it and how quickly [White] values people — or how highly he values people away from the sport that kind of built his reputation — it’s just upsetting, to be fair. It’s disappointing more than anything.”
The timing of Zuffa Boxing’s official launch in 2026 coincides with the UFC kicking off its Paramount era after striking a colossal $7.7 billion deal with its new broadcast partner. A deal of such financial magnitude assuredly brought about significant changes in UFC athletes’ payouts, right? Not necessarily.
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Extra $25,000 bonuses for finishes have been added, along with an increase to the promotion’s traditional Performance and Fight of the Night bonuses. However, that’s seemingly the only place fighter pay in the UFC has shifted at present. And similar to former UFC champion Sean O’Malley, who appeared incredulous at Benn’s deal but ultimately resigned to his fate within the UFC’s less lucrative payment structure, Page doesn’t see much of an opportunity for his fellow fighters to argue their worth.
“I don’t think so. And the reason I don’t think so, it gives us something to complain about,” Page said, “but in all honestly I think if you couldn’t see the value of your fighters prior to this, and then you slap a price tag on — I love Conor Benn, but he’s nowhere near the best in his field. I think he’s a great fighter, I love watching him, he’s an exciting fighter, but he’s not the best in his field in terms of his weight division. He’s got a lot to prove still within the boxing world, and you slap that price tag on him?
“I’ve been saying this for a long time, I feel like we have deserved more. I hate hearing stories of fighters getting to what is the pinnacle of your career, in terms of the UFC, and still being broke. That just shouldn’t exist. Unless you’re just completely terrible with money, it just shouldn’t exist that you’re struggling from fight to fight, and it just shouldn’t be a thing. … The only thing I can say is it’s disappointing more than anything.”
Page added that he knows it’s not a secret that the price tags in boxing are significantly higher than they are in MMA. But that doesn’t make the reality any less sour.
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“The game has kind of set you in a position where you get to a place where you enjoy it, and now you have to go and do something you might not ‘not enjoy’ [like boxing], but it’s something that doesn’t bring you the most joy,” Page said. “So you’re at your pinnacle, and now you’re thinking about having to go somewhere else [to make more money].
“I love combat. But what I’m passionate about is mixed martial arts. There’s a different kind of love for it. So it’s a shame that you can’t really achieve what you want to, financially speaking, purely from being great at your passion in this particular field. And I feel like it’s one of the very few fields where that is the case.”
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For now, at least, Page (24-3) remains fixated on MMA.
For his next order of business, it’s back to the welterweight division after a successful two-fight stint at middleweight. “Venom” looked arguably his sharpest at the new weight class in 2025 since he debuted in the Octagon, scoring unanimous decisions over Jared Cannonier and Sharabutdin Magomedov.
Another big-name opponent felt like an obvious next step for the striking sensation, however he’s instead been tasked with fending off a rising prospect, Sam Patterson, at UFC London on March 21.
Even Page is confused by the booking.
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“I’ve been asking for a lot of different fighters and not really getting responses, and I wasn’t panicking, but I definitely felt more urgency when I was speaking to the UFC,” Page said. “I was like, ‘What’s going on? Who am I going to be fighting?’ We had a few back-and-forths, and we just kind of pushed a ton of names over that we hadn’t really considered before because they weren’t the high-level names. But which one of these types of guys are [the UFC] looking for? Because the names we’re sending over don’t seem to be getting any type of responses. … Sam stepped up to the plate and I guess wanted to fight.
“It’s an unusual one, but either way, I’m excited to just be back in the cage. I’m glad I got a fight. I’m glad I didn’t miss the opportunity to fight back in the UK, because I think a lot of people wanted me to be there, and I’m just excited to put on a show.
”For me, it’s a slightly weird one,” Page added, “but I’m going to go and do what I do best — put on an amazing show, and hopefully progress to a bigger name after that.”
