How much would seeing Mitchell take a UFC beating actually ‘hurt’ him?
On Saturday night, Jean Silva said something that countless others have likely uttered in recent weeks: He wants to beat up Bryce Mitchell.
After once again delivering on the promise of an entertaining knockout—something he has done four consecutive times since joining the UFC roster just a little over a year ago—Silva took aim at the 13th-ranked featherweight contender.
“There’s a guy that’s been talking a lot of crap, Bryce Mitchell,” Silva said through an interpreter during his post-fight interview. “Dana [White], put him in front of me and I’ll do the job.”
That “crap” that Mitchell has been talking is his love for Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany during World War II. Mitchell became a mainstream embarrassment for MMA last month when he claimed that Hitler “was a good guy” when he tried to exterminate Jewish people.
The story made it to every single top media site you can imagine, going far outside the orbit of MMA. Mitchell, who did not receive any real punishment from the UFC for his ignorant and damaging comments, later said he was sorry that he “sounded insensitive.”
The idea of the human wrecking ball that is Silva getting his hands on Mitchell excited many, as UFC’s White admitted. “I bet there’s a lot of people that do [want to see that fight],” White said, laughing during a press conference on Saturday night.
Silva isn’t the only one who wants to beat Mitchell, in some capacity. This weekend, Karate Combat had briefly planned for a grappling match between Mitchell and Ilay Barzilay, an Israeli, “Proud Jew” MMA prospect who had previously been outspoken about the UFC fighter’s comments (Mitchell recently withdrew from the matchup in preparation for an upcoming “big” MMA assignment).
I totally get that people want to see a Hitler-loving bigot get punched in the face. Or, if not that extreme, that they just want to see him get his ass handed to him somehow, whether it be in MMA, grappling, or any form of competition.
But here’s the issue: If your way of “hurting” Mitchell is signing him up for competitions, especially those like MMA and grappling which he has already spent years making money doing anyway, are you really even hurting him? He may have a larger target on his back, but he’s still going to get paid for doing something he has pursued for over a decade now.
Really, the masses craving for Mitchell to get beaten up might actually raise his stock in the sport, as horrible as that sounds. Promoters don’t care why someone wants to watch their product, they just care that someone is watching. If a lot of people want to tune in and watch Mitchell lose, that only would make a promoter want to keep him more.
It’s hard to measure how much Mitchell makes in MMA, but he’s making a living in the sport. Due to the Nevada State Athletic Commission obscuring fighter purses, the last Mitchell pay stub we can track down goes back to UFC 249 in 2020, when he beat Charles Rosa on one of the promotion’s first COVID-19 pandemic cards. On that show, he made a little over $50,000. Not sports-star money but certainly better than the base pay a fighter usually earns upon entering the promotion.
There is no doubt that Mitchell is earning more than what he got paid in 2020. Since that dominating performance over Rosa, he has never been placed lower than the main card in a lineup and has appeared against top names like Ilia Topuria and Edson Barboza in pay-per-view presentations.
Safe to say Mitchell is making more than a run-of-the-mill UFC name.
If you want to hit Mitchell where it hurts, you have to go after his wallet. Don’t let him work the same job he’s been at for years, likely netting him six-figure annual payouts by now. Don’t let him into the space you occupy. Don’t let him start to market himself as the guy people hate, as a villain, because he knows that would attract attention and, in turn, money.
I get the instinct to support seeing Mitchell eat a nasty punch from Fighting Nerds gym stand-out Silva inside the UFC cage. But stop for a second and think about it: Isn’t this helping pay for the bigot’s next vacation?
Not such a fun premise anymore.
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