Luke Rockhold claims no one on the UFC roster "has enough balls" to raise the issue of fighter pay
Luke Rockhold recently claimed that no fighter on the UFC roster is willing to challenge the promotion's fighter pay.
During an appearance on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour, Luke Rockhold spoke in great depth about the widely controversial issue of fighter pay. Many have argued that the UFC does not pay its fighters as much as they deserve to be paid.
Issues like Jorge Masvidal and Jon Jones' debate about pay have received ample media coverage. In fact, both fighters were very vocal about their issues regarding their levels of remuneration. Although they were highlighted, talk died down soon after the issues had been brought up.
Luke Rockhold has now expressed his views on fighter pay and why it has not been able to gain consistent momentum. He said:
"No one has enough balls. No one has enough cojones. That's the problem. There's very few people who have the f***ing balls. But, to get the right amount of people together to do that thing, that would never happen. Not in any foreseeable future."
Further explaining what happens when a fighter sparks a conversation about fighter pay, Luke Rockhold said:
"They [UFC] give out enough to make everyone come back for more. And then, someone sparks up a conversation and they get shelfed until they run out of money and they want to come back and they have to deal with [it]. This is the game we play."
Catch Luke Rockhold's appearance on The MMA Hour below:
Luke Rockhold suggests Ngannou, Usman and Adesanya "could have changed the landscape" of the problem
While speaking about how fighters need support to stand up in front of the UFC, Luke Rockhold suggested that we could have witnessed such a scenario in Francis Ngannou's recent issues with the promotion.
This ended in the announcement of the interim title fight between Ciryl Gane and Derrick Lewis mere months after Ngannou won his title. Rockhold suggested that if the African trio of Kamaru Usman, Israel Adesanya and Francis Ngannou had gotten together, they could have made a considerable stand against the UFC.
"If they're gonna do that to Francis [Nannou] and his two brothers aren't gonna get behind and sack up and be the men they should have been when he got shelved...there, you've got two Nigerian brothers, they're champions. They should have just stood by him, and maybe that could have changed the landscape, but that's about it."