Cub Swanson Says That UFC Pampered Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey

In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Cub Swanson accused the UFC of pampering Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey and giving them easier paths to stardom. Here are highlights:

On if he’s been compensated fairly for his career: “No, I haven’t been, and I feel all the fighters should be paid more. I feel I was putting in my dues for a long time out of an ignorance of thinking, ‘I’m going to put in the work and I’ll be taken care of.’ I feel I’ve been paid good, but when you see guys like Conor [McGregor], guys like Nate Diaz, who are hardly fighting and make a couple of [million] each fight, man. I’ve trained side-by-side with all these boxers and they make more money than me. My boxing coach [Joel Diaz] makes more money than I do making a small percentage of one of his boxers’ purses. That put it into perspective, especially when I’ll look at a boxer and realize that he doesn’t train harder than me. For everything I’ve already done and what I bring to the table, and what a lot of us do, we should be taken care of more long-term, that’s all.”

On Rousey and McGregor getting preferential treatment: “[They sold millions], that’s very fair, but I also think both of them were very pampered. You know I’ll take slack for saying that, but it’s very true. I tell young fighters this all the time. Me and [Brian] Ortega both, we’re just another fighter from California. We’re not from a country that doesn’t have any other fighters and so we don’t have an entire country backing us up. So we’re not an easy sell from a promoter’s perspective.”

On if he would take a non-title fight: “I would never say yes to a fight that would take me out of the title picture if I’m in it. If I did it, I’d want to be compensated. That’s the important thing. If you ask me to do something like that, I need to be compensated correctly.”