Unlike other professional sports organizations that have cautioned, not to mention fined, its players for using Twitter, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is encouraging its fighters to tweet as much as possible. According to a UFC official, UFC president Dana White announced at the UFC Fighter Summit, held this week in Las Vegas, that fighters will receive bonuses for adding Twitter followers and writing creative tweets. Here's how the new Twitter bonus initiative will work: Starting June 1, UFC and Strikeforce fighters will be divided into four categories, based on how many Twitter followers they currently have. At the end of each quarter, three fighters from each category will be awarded a $5,000 bonus. The three winners will be based on who has gained the most followers since the start of the quarter, who gained the highest percentage of new followers and who wrote the most creative tweets. White will be the judge of the last category. At the conclusion of a full calendar year, the UFC will end up paying $240,000 a year to its fighters for their Twitter usage. So while NFL and NBA players have been fined for tweeting during team functions, the UFC is doing the exact opposite. The majority of the 350 fighters contracted to UFC and Strikeforce were present at the UFC Fighter Summit. Seminars on Zuffa's new insurance coverage, taxes, gambling and, of course, social media were held. For more information on the summit, click here.

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Uncle Dana said he wants to make MMA the biggest sport in the world and it looks like they are going to try anything they can to build up their fan base.

I really like the idea. Twitter/Facebook or any of those other social avenues are absolute gold for promoting whatever you want to promote. In this day and age everyone wants to know everyone's business and wants it to come easily. Nothing easier then doing this through the most popular social media sources.

I wonder if there is going to be a bit of a leash put on the fighters in regards to what they talk about or how they talk about other fighters. They wouldn't want this to get out of hand and damaging the image of a "brutal combat sport". I know Dana says he never tells anyone what to say or do but we aren't all that naive are we?

I think you're right that Mayhem may have a few bonus' coming his way.

Originally Posted by SM33 I don't know, I can see how this is good for the company, but not for the fighters. There are already a few who are too media-concious and read the internet too much, it's a bad habit which can sky rocket a fighter's ego in one day and then make them look like fools the next. Totally unnecessary mental strain for a fighter. Many fighters purposely stay away from the internet for these reasons, but money is money... My argument does seem petty but small things like this will affect some fighters negatively. They'll do it for the money and end up embroiled in the internet world they never wanted to be a part of, reading things they never intended to read. I could be completely wrong though cus I don't use Twitter.

I agree that a lot of fighters avoid things like Twitter on purpose and I also agree that there will be certain ego's that will get overblown by this.

With that said, there are a lot of cool people out there that haven't explored these social sources that could let their personality be known and eventually could lead to bigger and better things. How many guys out there do you think have the personality like Rampage? Probably a ton of them but they don't do anything about it so their status and income is reflected by that.

I'm not trying to say that status and income is everything but if you're a professional fighter its going to come with the territory whether you like it or not. If you embrace it to a certain degree I believe it will pay off in the long run. You don't have to go crazy, you can post 1 cool thing a week and you could do much better than a guy that posts 10 times a day.

Originally Posted by Sicilian_Esq Nick Diaz can finally get paid.

Originally Posted by Squirrelfighter Mayhem Miller just became a multi-millionaire.

Thanks to limba for this AWESOME sig

Originally Posted by Sicilian_Esq Nick Diaz can finally get paid.