Crocop makes 350k for the simple reason at the time they signed him the UFC was stuck with a dead heavyweight division. With Timmy as champ, all they had was luring an old man out of retirement. They needed to give crocop huge money to get him to leave Pride. The same goes for Werdum. It's nothing to do with fighters getting so much more.
Since the purchase of Pride they no longer have to worry about buying fighters from the other org. Nor do they need to worry about fighter retention. They have no where else to really go. I'm really curious to see how the new fighter contracts are going to look since this purchase went through. I have a hard time believing that salaries will continue to rise until another org. can be a legit threat for stealing talent(obviously I'm not talking about the one fight promotions)
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