Nate Diaz walked into the Intuit Dome on Saturday night in Inglewood, California, covered in his usual pre-fight calm, ready for his first MMA fight in four years.
He walked out covered in his own blood, his corner having thrown in the towel between rounds two and three, with Mike Perry standing across the cage calling out Jake Paul.
That is how Netflix’s first-ever live MMA event ended for Diaz. Perry defeated him via doctor’s stoppage at the conclusion of the second round, the official time recorded at 5:00 of round two.
Not the finish Diaz or his fanbase wanted, but the result was hard to argue with. Diaz was wearing the crimson mask and Perry had just sent him stumbling backwards with a knee right at the bell. The ringside doctor took one look and that was all she wrote.
Diaz was philosophical about it afterwards, as he always is. “I had blood in my eye, I couldn’t see,” he said. Then he immediately called for a rematch. “I’m gonna come back and get him. Come on. Ain’t nobody beating me twice.” That is as Nate Diaz as it gets.
As for the money, MVP promotions co-founder Mok Bidarian went on The Ariel Helwani Show before the event and confirmed that every fighter on the card received a guaranteed flat-rate purse with performance bonuses on top. The purse numbers have since been officially revealed.
Nate Diaz made $500,000 for the fight. No win bonus, no PPV points, no sliding scale. A flat $500,000 guaranteed regardless of the result, which is the model MVP has built its entire promotional structure around.
Seven fighters on the undercard picked up $40,000 performance bonuses for their efforts on the night.
Pre-fight estimates had Diaz somewhere between $4 million and $7 million, per The Sportster, based on his star power and the Netflix platform’s spending habits in combat sports.
The official number landed significantly below that range. Whether there are backend streaming incentives or promotional agreements not reflected in the disclosed figure is unclear, but what was confirmed puts Diaz at half a million for one of the bloodiest fights of his career.
As for his overall wealth, Nate Diaz’s net worth is estimated at $8 million to $10 million as of early 2026. He has built that over nearly two decades in combat sports, most of it through the UFC where he became one of the biggest non-title pay-per-view draws in the promotion’s history.
His 2016 victory over Conor McGregor at UFC 196 alone reportedly brought in around $2 million when accounting for his full fight purse and PPV points.
He is 41 years old, carries a professional MMA record of 21 wins and 14 losses, and this was his return to the cage after four years away. In between, he lost to Jake Paul in boxing in 2023 before beating Jorge Masvidal in 2024.
The man who beat him Saturday night, Mike Perry, now stands at 15 wins and 8 losses in MMA and notched his first cage victory since June 2020.
How Much Did Mike Perry Make Tonight
Perry came in at $400,000 guaranteed, confirmed in the same official purse disclosure. That is $100,000 less than Diaz, which reflects the star power gap between the two fighters even at this stage of their careers.
It is also, notably, a career-high payday for Perry in MMA. When a reporter asked him before the fight whether the purse would be the biggest of his career, Perry did not hesitate. “Yeah, for sure,” he said.
To understand how significant that number is in the context of Perry’s career, consider this. In 15 UFC fights across five years, Perry made a reported total of $1.3 million, according to sports analysis site US Gamblers.
That averages out to under $87,000 per fight. Saturday night’s single appearance paid him nearly five times his average UFC cheque.
Perry left the UFC in 2021 and reinvented himself at Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, where he went 8-0 and became the organization’s “King of Violence” champion.
He signed a reported $8 million multi-fight BKFC deal, a figure Perry himself confirmed to MMA Fighting.
His single biggest BKFC payday came against former UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, where he reportedly pocketed $1.1 million for one night’s work.
Perry also took a high-profile boxing loss against Jake Paul, which reportedly tripled his UFC career earnings in a single fight despite the defeat.
Perry’s net worth is estimated at approximately $2.5 million as of late 2025, per Fanarch, though that figure predates Saturday’s payday and any performance bonuses that may come from the Netflix event.
Some outlets have him closer to the $1 to $2 million range, with the discrepancy largely coming down to how each source accounts for his BKFC contract value versus cash on hand.
Perry’s record and story are worth knowing. The 34-year-old from Flint, Michigan made his UFC debut in 2016 as an undefeated brawler with nine wins, all by knockout.
His UFC career plateaued after a four-fight losing stretch and he departed the promotion after a loss to Daniel Rodriguez. What happened next defines him better than anything from his UFC days.
He rebuilt himself from scratch in bare-knuckle boxing, went undefeated, became a pay-per-view draw and earned a payday on Netflix that dwarfs anything the UFC ever handed him.
On Saturday he walked into a co-main event against one of MMA’s most iconic names, in front of a sold-out Intuit Dome, on the platform with 325 million subscribers, and won.
He then got on the microphone and called out Jake Paul for a second time, this time in MMA, before immediately agreeing to a Nate Diaz rematch in the same breath.
“He’s the toughest guy out there,” Perry said of Diaz after the fight. “There’s no quit in him. Blood was spilled.”
There was. Mostly Diaz’s. But the rematch, if it happens, will not be short on buyers.
Read More: Gina Carano’s parents built the sports base behind a fighter who never really left the spotlight
