Chael Sonnen makes sense of new Reebok® deal
source | MMAJunkie.com
“As fighters, we never should have been able to get our own sponsors,” said Sonnen. “No executive producers of a show, whether it’s the silver screen or your television set, allows paid talent to come in and then have outside sponsors. If you watch ‘Saturday Night Live’ and a guy shows up in a Nike shirt, you can bet your ass that NBC got the check for that Nike shirt and had wardrobe put it on that talent. Nowhere in the world does this happen.
“If you pay for the camera and the lights and venues and take all the risk and are the entrepreneurs, you get all of the revenue. (UFC President) Dana White broke that cycle a number of years ago because the UFC was so small that he was ashamed of what he was having to pay his guys. So he said, ‘Get money wherever you can. I’ll approve every sponsor, and I want you guys to have every dollar.’ I was there when he gave that speech to the fighters in 2005.”