UFC star Miesha Tate plays the gender card, claims Reebok deal is unfair to women

She has a point.

UFC women's bantamweight contender is the latest fighter to voice her disapproval of the UFC's new sponsorship deal with Reebok.

“Honestly, I’m not that excited about the numbers. I’m taking a big loss on my sponsorship dollars, so I’m definitely going to be making nowhere near as much.”

Under the new deal, fighters are prohibited from wearing any non-Reebok apparel during fight week events, but receive a percentage of the sponsorship money based on how many fights they've had in the promotion. Tate is one of the veterans of the Women's MMA, but will still only be making $5,000 because the UFC only introduced a female division in 2013. Even at that, female fighters tend to get a lot less fights than their male counterparts. The women's bantamweight fighter explained that she is set to lose a whopping amount of sponsorship revenue because of the deal, and she feels it is particularly unfair for female athletes in the promotion.

“I probably have the most fights (among the female fighters) because of Strikeforce, and I’m still only on the second tier, so I get 5000 dollars. So I’m losing probably 90% or like 80% of what I make in sponsorships, so that hurts.”

“I think it’s a little bit unfair for Women’s Mixed Martial Arts because we’ve barely been in the UFC very long. We don’t have the same number of fights as the guys do, because they wouldn’t let us in forever, you know?”

She added that male fighters such as fan favourite Donald Cerrone, who is set to be one of the top earners from the Reebok, have had way more opportunities to fight in comparison to the women in the promotion.

“The UFC has been around a long time, but Women’s MMA in the UFC has been there for a little over two years so it’s not fair." "There are guys like Clay Guida and Cowboy Cerrone, they’ve been fighting for the UFC for a long time so they’re going to have more fights because they’re men and they’re allowed to fight in the UFC for a long time. The women have not had the same opportunity.”

Hat-tip to BJ Penn