One of the biggest problems that professional athletes, including MMA fighters, come to face when they retire is – financial stability. But why?
Shouldn’t the fighters, especially the ones in top-ranking organizations, be making more than enough to be financially sound their entire life?
Ben Askren realized that this wasn’t the case after he retired. He shared why in an interview on Dad Saves America:
I realized most athletes end up poor. And this is the truth as a fighter and obviously we don’t make as much money as an NBA or an NFL player…
But you realize, like in my last MMA fight I made $300,000. But, like for me to do that again. I don’t have an easy way to make that much money again.
Whereas the fighting was like one fight, I show up, boom, check, there you go.
In other words, Askren is saying that retired athletes don’t know how to make money after they retire. Plus, they don’t make good financial decisions along the way:
But for these fighters, you know, they get to this point where, okay, they say: “All right, I’m gonna retire. I’m done with training, my body’s beat up.”
So then they retire and then they realize like: “Wow, making that much money in the real world’s like really hard and I didn’t save enough.”
Which is what, ultimately, makes them go into the octagon again:
