UFC legend Georges St. Pierre became very wealthy by being one of the promotion’s leading pay-per-view draws during his era, and he fears that their new broadcasting deal with Paramount+ will make it more difficult for others to follow in his footsteps.

St-Pierre’s main argument is essentially that fighters will now have less leverage at the negotiating table due to the fact that the UFC is already getting guaranteed money regardless of who is fighting or how many people are watching.

“It could be good for the UFC, as a promoter, but terrible for the fighters because when I was competing I was able to have a great argument to negotiate on my contract,” St. Pierre told Covers. “I could tell the UFC, ‘Hey, if you want me to do all the promotion, I want to become a partner. I want a piece of the pie to negotiate a part of the pay-per-view revenue. Because if I’m doing all the promotion, I’m helping you, but you need to help me. You need to make me a partner.’ So it might be a bad thing for the fighters in a way that they have less leverage.

“That’s what I think. I think it’s going to take off some leverage for the big names to have an argument to negotiate more money.”

GSP is not the only former fighter sounding the alarm about the deal as Matt Brown has also expressed similar concerns.

“They don’t have to pay fighters more,” Brown told MMAfighting. “They do not. I promise you that. They will get away with it. So just recognizing that, you can make your own decision if you want to call your Congressman or whatever to try and fix this. But that is what the facts of the case are. There’s no counterbalance. The UFC does what they want, when they want, how they want, as big as they want and nobody is saying ‘hey motherf*cker what about us?’

“It just the facts of the matter. It just needs to happen. There needs to be a counterbalance. There’s no historical stats saying anything is going to change. If you’re a fighter, don’t get your hopes up.”