UFC Payouts: Will Henry Cejudo Earn More Than Aljamain Sterling?

The wait is almost over. The return of Henry Cejudo to the UFC in a title fight against Aljamain Sterling will happen this weekend. We had to wait a month for a new PPV event but UFC 288: Sterling vs Cejudo is here. What will the UFC payouts be this week?

UFC 288 Prize Money: How much will the champion and the contender earn?

If you ask us, we feel like the UFC fighter pay for this event will be rather low. A title fight should be in the million range – the expectations, however, are that neither of the fighters on this card will earn more than $500,000 for showing up. This includes Sterling and Cejudo.

Based on their previous purses, the expectations are for the $400,000 – $500,000 range for both fighters. In fact, we have some information that Henry Cejudo has been promised an even higher purse than the champion. Do you think that this is enough for one of the biggest fights we will see this year?

Cejudo's back, and so are the antics 😅@FunkMasterMMA vs @HenryCejudo for the bantamweight strap at #UFC288!!

[ Saturday | Live on ESPN+ PPV: https://t.co/ZDDxUDJwAA ] pic.twitter.com/bcXGNOMMHO

— UFC (@ufc) May 4, 2023

UFC Payouts: Aljamain Sterling – the Champion

Overall, the expectations are that Aljamain Sterling should earn about $400,000 for showing up for this fight. Of course, this amount will double if he wins and there will also be other bonuses, sponsorships, and more.

Of course, we cannot guarantee this with 100% certainty but when we look at the previous purses, we do not expect more than $400,000. He was paid about $200,000 to show up for his fight against Petr Yan for the title rematch. He was then paid about $300,000 to show up for his T.J. Dillashaw fight. Both purses were doubled after his wins but those were the original amounts.

How much will the former champion Henry Cejudo earn?

As we mentioned above, we think that Henry Cejudo will actually earn more than the current champion. Of course, he retired over three years ago and back then, the UFC payouts were far lower than the current ones. So, Cejudo has never earned more than $440,000 for a win, which means that his base pay was around $200,000.

Right now, we expect that he will earn around $500,000 for this fight and this amount will double with a win.

UFC Fighter Pay: Main Card Expectations

We witnessed three Fight Nights in a row and the UFC payouts there are always far smaller than the big PPV events. This time, the full amount will probably pass 3 million in the end. Here are our predictions for the UFC 288 prize money for each of the Main Card fighters.

• Henry Cejudo – $500,000
• Aljamain Sterling – $400,000
• Gilbert Burns – $200,000
• Jessica Andrade – $200,000
• Yan Xiaonan – $100,000
• Belal Muhammad – $85,000 – $100,000
• Movsar Evloev – $50,000
• Diego Lopes – $35,000
• Kron Gracie – $30,000
• Charles Jourdain – $30,000

As you can see, the main card is stacked with former champions and former title contenders. We also see some of the biggest prospects in this card. These are our predicted UFC payouts, which can change, of course, depending on who wins. This is all we can predict at this point and we only have a couple of days to see the actual results.

We will return with the updates once the massive UFC 288: Sterling vs Cejudo is over.