"18% is what you pay your waitress at Applebee’s" - Former UFC fighter willing to put "career on the line" to see GFL's 50/50 revenue split succeed

Former UFC star Kevin Lee has high hopes for the new Global Fight League (GFL) and is willing to put his job on the line to see the new MMA promotion succeed. Lee recently shared his thoughts on the GFL's 50/50 revenue split and compared it to the UFC's 18% share.

The GFL made waves in the combat sports world after the promotion signed a slew of high-profile MMA stars and announced that it would host its first event in April. The new promotion also claimed that they'd be giving their fighters a whopping 50% share of the revenue, which is significantly more than what the UFC offers its fighters.

With stars like Luke Rockhold, Tyron Woodley, Junior Dos Santos, Fabricio Werdum, Benson Henderson, and Cain Velasquez already on board, many are optimistic about the GFL's success. During a recent interview with Ariel Helwani, Lee shared his take on the revenue share matter and said:

"If it works f***** fantastic, but even if it doesn’t work, and if doing a 50-50 split with the fighters and the promotion doesn’t work and that’s what we see here, then it’s going to give transparency into what this sport actually is... If you can only pay guys 18% of the back end and that’s the only thing that works in this sport, well it’s not really a sport; that is more a bunch of poor guys fighting for billionaire’s chump change... 18% is what you pay your waitress at Applebee’s." [H/t: Bloody Elbow]

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Former UFC star slams GFL for making unrealistic financial promises to fighters

Former UFC star Josh Thompson recently sounded off on the GFL for seemingly making unfair promises to their fighters. After Paige VanZant opened up about signing with the GFL and how the new promotion was handing out contracts to any fighter with an established name, Thompson claimed that it was part of a capital-raising plan and wouldn't be sustainable in the long run.

In a recent episode of his podcast, Thompson outlined his take on the GFL's recent actions and said:

"They’re basically signing these fighters, I don’t know if there’s any pay coming out of them... So that they can take those contracts to sponsors [and] to people that are ready to [invest], to raise capital for this... What I have heard is they came out with some astronomical amount of money they said they were gonna spend in their first year. Like $550 million...or maybe it's $250 million. That's crazy, and I'm like, that's one way to go out of business."

Catch Josh Thompson's comments below (38:55):