In 2016, CM Punk, real name Phil Brooks, made his mixed martial arts debut at UFC 203, taking on Mickey Gall, who had one UFC fight under his belt. The contest lasted slightly over two minutes and ended with Gall making The Second City Savior tap to a rear-naked choke in the first round. It was an unceremonious loss that has been discussed ever since, with many throwing shade at Punk’s performance.
Due to a class-action lawsuit being leveled by former UFC fighters against the combat sports juggernaut, some documents about the purses paid out for major stars have been unsealed. Bloody Elbow has been able to get some of those documents and has issued a report looking at how much some marquee names have made for their fights. One of those names is CM Punk.
According to the report, Punk was paid $1,042,736 for his debut UFC fight against Mickey Gall. For those interested, with the bout lasting two minutes and fourteen seconds, that comes out to $7,781.62 per second of action. Granted, at the end of those two minutes and fourteen seconds, Punk’s face looked like ground beef, but that’s still a lot of money for your troubles.
While a million dollars is a substantial sum, it pales compared to the payouts fellow former WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar got for his fights. For his match against Alistair Overeem, he was paid three million dollars, and for his contest against Mark Hunt, he got eight million. It was noted in the report that Lesnar’s eight million dollar payday was the highest for any performer “for years,” with The Beast forgoing a cut of PPV sales in favor of taking a flat fee. He received a base purse of $2.5 million and another $5.5 million as part of a side deal.
Punk fought in one more UFC match beyond his fight against Gall, taking on Mike Jackson at UFC 225. Punk was unsuccessful in that contest as well, but the decision was later overturned after Jackson tested positive for marijuana in his system.