http://www.cagepotato.com/dana-white-is ... heck-stub/
Dana White, explaining Zuffa’s recent axing of Alistair Overeem, Valentijn Overeem, Marloes Coenen, and Jon Olav Einemo:
“This is actually a pretty simple explanation. If you look back throughout history, we haven’t had any Golden Glory guys fight with us since Semmy Schilt, right? And the reason is we have very different business practices. It’s tough to do business with them. The bottom line is the way they do business is, you have to pay them, not the fighters. We don’t work that way. It’s not the way we do business. It’s not how it works in the United States with the athletic commissions. You don’t pay the managers and the managers pay the fighters. You pay the fighters and the fighters pay the managers…The reality is, we’re trying to work out deals with these guys and they won’t do it. They said you absolutely can’t pay the fighters, you have to pay us. And it’s pretty simple to look back and see that the last guy who fought in UFC was Semmy Schilt. There was a reason for that.”
Marloes Coenen, calling “bullshit” last night:
“@danawhite hurts me 2 hear things about my management that are not true. #Ibelieveinthetruth #proof [url]http://twitpic.com/6113vq”[/url]
The check-stub image shows $37,506 being paid directly to Coenen by Forza, LLC — the Zuffa subsidiary that purchased Strikeforce — clearly contradicting White’s explanation about why the Golden Glory fighters were cut. So now we’re back at the original, more logicial explanation: Alistair Overeem was released because he didn’t play ball to a sufficient degree, and his teammates were cut to emphasize that point, pretty much out of spite. Sound about right?
Of course, Marloes Coenen airing proof of her salary opens up another can of worms entirely. While she cleared a respectable $37,500 for her final effort in Strikeforce, that figure doesn’t come close to matching up with her previous reported salaries, which were officially $10,000, $3,000, and $2,000 for her last three performances. We’ve always assumed that some international fighters were paid the majority of their purses off the books in order to avoid being taxed in two different countries, but this seems to confirm it. Will this incident lead to closer speculation about Strikeforce’s financial practices — and could it spell the end of unreported tax-dodging for other international fighters?
