“My understanding is that we have to wear Reebok with the UFC. There’s no other option. Well, you get paid to wear Reebok but you only get paid in their program, whatever their pay scale is. I took my negotiations over to Bellator, where there is no sponsorship tax, so my sponsors can sponsor me directly.

“So, if I have a company that is sponsoring me for $20,000 per fight, my sponsors aren’t getting taxed by Bellator, which is more money in my pocket. You can’t say that the UFC can match that. They just can’t.”

Former UFC lightweight and Strikeforce champion Josh Thomson recently left the UFC and joined up with his former boss Scott Coker at Bellator MMA.

Thomson talked to ESPN about the decision and said that in the end, the UFC just couldn’t match the kind of offer he was getting from Bellator, which included non taxed sponsorship money.

Will more fighters take this route and go where they’ll be more lucrative?

 
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