Fans have been eager to see Nicky Rodriguez make his MMA debut for quite some time now, and the top BJJ competitor has now revealed what it would take to get him to do it. It isn’t going to be cheap apparently, but that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given how many opportunities Rodriguez has for the future. He’s already one of the most popular stars in the grappling world and can command decent fees for superfights there, but he’s also been going through the WWE tryout process too.
Nicky Rodriguez revealed how much money he would need to be paid to make his MMA debut in a recent appearance on the JAXXON podcast:
“I would definitely fight against the right opponent for like seven figures. I would consider something like that, but you know, Jiu-Jitsu’s doing well. I sell a ton of beef jerky nowadays, that’s doing great. I’ll just kinda continue to gain momentum in multiple facets, multiple income streams, and it’s going well man.”
While a seven-figure purse might seem crazy, it’s worth remembering that there’s a lot of money on the table when it comes to professional MMA. Rodriguez actually recently received an offer to compete in a bare knuckle MMA fight but decided against taking advantage of the opportunity. Given how much smaller that subsection of the sport is, it’s unlikely that the offer he received would have met his asking price anyway. He went on to give some further detail on why he’s set the price so high as well:
“We’re nearing in on six figures per match nowadays. I would need like seven figures to hop in a cage. I could do a few matches, make a mil or I could do one fight and make a mil. That’s fun to me. But what’s also different between MMA and Jiu-Jitsu is that Jiu-Jitsu is very fun, it’s enjoyable the whole time, it’s not that much stress. Fighting is not as much fun. For sure, some fighters love what they do, but the consequence, the worst case scenario is much worse than the worst case scenario in Jiu-Jitsu.”
The full interview with Nicky Rodriguez where he revealed the money he’d need to be paid to make his MMA debut was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the JAXXON podcast: