Barnett questions Page's $1M-per-fight Misfits deal, warns of 'old formula'

Former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett, 48, has raised concerns about the reported purse in Michael "Venom" Page's new contract, warning that reckless spending wars between promotions could ultimately hurt fighters.

MMA Sucka and other US combat sports outlets reported Wednesday that Barnett questioned the financial health of Misfits Boxing after Page disclosed the terms of his deal with the promotion.

Page appeared on "The Ariel Helwani Show" and revealed he had signed a three-fight contract with Misfits rather than re-signing with the UFC. The deal runs 18 months and covers both boxing and MMA bouts.

Page said he would earn a minimum of $1 million per fight under the agreement — and that his pay for three Misfits fights would exceed what he made across six UFC bouts.

Page went 5-1 inside the octagon, winning his final fight before his contract expired, yet the UFC did not offer him a new deal — an unusual outcome for a fighter with that record. He subsequently signed with Misfits, the promotion co-founded by YouTube-turned-boxer KSI.

Once Page's contract terms became public, Barnett took to social media to lay out two possibilities. "Either Page is telling a bold-faced lie for promotional purposes, or Misfits is following the old formula of jumping into the MMA market and throwing money around like crazy," Barnett said.

He then warned that the promotion would "burn through capital at a record pace and ultimately erect another tombstone in the combat sports market" — whether through incompetence or a deliberate strategy of raising money, spending it down and then unloading remaining assets at a discount.

Barnett said that if a promotion collapses under the weight of reckless spending, its intellectual property, video library and fighter contracts could be sold off for next to nothing. He cited the fates of EliteXC, Affliction, IFL, GFL and WSOF — all promotions that entered the market and eventually folded — as cautionary examples of that business model.

"In the end, the ones who really get screwed are the fighters," he said. "Again."

Barnett won the UFC heavyweight title in 2002 and last competed in MMA in 2016, when he submitted Andrei Arlovski. He has since worked in professional wrestling and bare-knuckle fighting.