If they paid more it would obviously attract more people. There could be tons of potential “best fighter in the world” types out there who literally never even considered joining due to how low the fighter pay is.

There would be a much larger pool of fighters at the very least, meaning the skill ceiling for the entire sport would likely go up, right?

On the other hand Someone like Francis N. was going to be in the UFC literally no matter what, I can’t even come up with a worse situation to use as an example, like, “he would have joined the UFC even if-“, but like, his life IS the “even if” and he still made it. So idk, maybe the best fighters in the world were going to join no matter how bad the pay is because they know they’ll be champions? What’s y’all’s thoughts?