UFC Bonuses Explained: Performance of the Night and the $100K Checks

Every UFC card hands out four standard awards: one Fight of the Night, which pays both fighters in the bout, and two Performance of the Night awards for individual showings. The amount is $100,000 per award, so the minimum bonus pool per event is now $400,000, up from the $200,000 it was under the old $50,000 structure.

The new finish bonus sits underneath that. Any fighter who wins by knockout or submission and does not get a Performance of the Night check receives $25,000. The two do not stack. Ariel Helwani clarified in April 2026 that a fighter who finishes and wins Performance of the Night gets $100,000, not $125,000. You get the bigger of the two.

The first card under the new structure was UFC 324 on January 24, 2026 at T-Mobile Arena. Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett split Fight of the Night, Josh Hokit and Ty Miller took Performance of the Night, and Alex Perez was excluded from the finish bonus for missing weight.

The awards go back to UFC Fight Night 3 on January 16, 2006 at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. That was the first event where the UFC officially handed out post-fight bonuses: Melvin Guillard and Josh Neer got Fight of the Night, Chris Leben got Knockout of the Night and Jason Von Flue got Submission of the Night.

For eight years the three awards were Fight, Knockout and Submission of the Night, and the money moved around depending on the event. Early bonuses ranged from $30,000 up to $160,000, and pay-per-view cards usually paid more than free TV cards. When Nick Diaz and BJ Penn fought at UFC 137 in October 2011, both took home $75,000 for Fight of the Night.

On February 11, 2014 the UFC scrapped Knockout of the Night and Submission of the Night and replaced them with two Performance of the Night awards. The change took effect immediately, starting at UFC Fight Night 36, and the UFC said the new award would "reward the athletes who put on the best and most exciting individual performances."

The logic was that a knockout bonus on a card with no knockouts was a wasted check, and a wild five-round decision could be more impressive than a routine submission. Performance of the Night let the promotion pay whoever actually stood out, finish or not. Fight of the Night stayed as the award for the best bout on the card.

The standard amount settled at $50,000 the same year, and it did not move until January 2026 outside of one-off nights where the UFC chose to pay more.

The decision rests with Dana White and the two matchmakers, Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard. They sort it out after the main event and White reads the winners at the post-fight press conference or posts them on social media.

It is subjective by design, and White has admitted as much. After UFC Vegas on May 30, 2020, when Billy Quarantillo and Spike Carlyle had a wild fight and got passed over, a reporter raised it and White said, "We blew it, huh?" and promised he would "kick those kids something" anyway. That is the whole system in one quote: three people, a short meeting and a lot of discretion.

Miss weight and you are out. The UFC has an unofficial rule that fighters who miss weight are ineligible for post-fight bonuses, on top of forfeiting a percentage of their purse to the opponent. Kevin Lee ran into it in April 2018 when he missed by a pound against Edson Barboza, gave up 20 percent of his purse and could not win a bonus, and he called it "not even a rule" at the time. It is still enforced. Esteban Ribovics missed by half a pound at UFC 332 in October 2026, forfeited 20 percent to King Green and was ruled ineligible for any award.

Bonuses are separate from the other guaranteed money fighters collect. Contracted show and win purses are negotiated per fighter. Promotional Guidelines Compliance pay, the outfitting money tied to fight-week duties, is a fixed scale that runs from $4,000 for fighters with one to three UFC bouts up to $21,000 for 21 or more, with $32,000 for title challengers and $42,000 for champions. At UFC 318 in July 2025, Max Holloway collected $42,000 in compliance pay and Dustin Poirier $32,000, while Fight of the Night that night went to Arnold Allen and Marvin Vettori, not the main event.

None of it is salary. A bonus is conditional money, which is exactly why the UFC likes it: the promotion only pays when it gets the fight it wanted.

Charles Oliveira is the all-time leader with 21. He broke the record with his 19th at UFC 289 in June 2023 when he stopped Beneil Dariush, and he extended it to 21 at UFC Rio on October 11, 2025 with a second-round armbar of Mateusz Gamrot. His breakdown is 14 Performance of the Night awards, which is also a record, plus four Fight of the Night and three old Submission of the Night checks.

Behind him sit Donald Cerrone with 18, Justin Gaethje with 17 after his two checks at UFC Freedom 250, Nate Diaz and Jim Miller with 16 each, and Joe Lauzon and Dustin Poirier with 15. Anderson Silva has 14 and Max Holloway 13. Conor McGregor, the biggest star the company has had, sits on 10.

Notice who is on that list. It is not the pound-for-pound greats so much as the guys who fight a certain way: Cerrone, Diaz, Lauzon, Miller, Gaethje. The bonus system has always rewarded chaos over control, and the leaderboard proves it.

For years the UFC occasionally bumped the number for special cards. UFC 264 in July 2021 paid $75,000, and White said at the time that making that permanent would "seriously" wreck the budget. UFC 300 on April 13, 2024 paid $300,000 per award after Gaethje publicly asked for it at the press conference and White agreed. Max Holloway walked out of T-Mobile Arena with $600,000 in bonus money after knocking out Gaethje with one second left in the fifth round, taking both Fight of the Night and Performance of the Night.

UFC 304 in Manchester in July 2024 paid $100,000 to Paddy Pimblett, Tom Aspinall and Mick Parkin, and White afterward said, "I'm not doing this again ever. Ever."

Then came UFC Freedom 250 on June 14, 2026 on the White House south lawn. Fight of the Night paid $400,000 to Gaethje and Ilia Topuria, Performance of the Night paid $425,000 each to Gaethje and Ciryl Gane, who knocked out Alex Pereira, and five more fighters took $25,000 finish bonuses on a seven-fight, seven-finish card. Gaethje banked $825,000 in bonus money alone on the night he beat Topuria for the undisputed lightweight title. The UFC said the increase was a one-off tied to corporate partnerships.

The answer is the Paramount deal. The UFC's broadcast agreement with Paramount+ runs seven years and $7.7 billion, roughly $1.1 billion a year through 2031, and White had been saying for months before it kicked in that "bonuses are obviously going up."

On January 24, 2026, the day of UFC 324 and the launch of the Paramount era, the promotion confirmed the $100,000 awards and the $25,000 finish bonus. White also said the old discretionary locker-room bonuses, the $5,000 to $25,000 checks he used to hand fighters after the show, were gone, replaced by the finish bonus everyone can see.

The honest read is that the $50,000 number had been frozen since 2014 while event revenue kept climbing, and the UFC could not sell a billion-dollar TV deal while telling fighters the budget was tight. Doubling the awards cost the company a few hundred thousand dollars per card and bought it a lot of goodwill. Whether it changes how fighters fight is the part worth watching.