UFC fighter Geoff Neal earned a devastating headkick knockout victory over Frank Camacho back at UFC 228 on Saturday, Sept. 8. Despite landing one of the most stunning finishes of the year, Neal did not receive a performance bonus from the event.
Speaking to MMA Fighting, Geoff Neal revealed that he is still waiting tables as a full time server for a local restaurant because he can not support himself with the UFC alone. To that end, the lack of performance bonus on Saturday did not sit well with the fighter.
“I thought it was bullshit, man. It is what it is, but yeah, it’s bullshit. I felt like that was probably the best finish on the card, you know? There were some solid finishes, and there are a lot of other things in play rather than just the performance, like maybe the toughness of the opponent. Other stuff. Me, I’m an unranked fighter on the prelims, so you get what you get.”
“I was looking at a lot of the comments [on social media]. People weren’t forgetting about it. People were like, Geoff or Razak or Zabit [Magomedsharipov] should get the bonus. I didn’t see nothing about anybody else — they were shouting out about our finishes.”
“It’s difficult, but it’s doable. When I’m tired, I try not to think about it. It’s hard, working until 3 o’clock in the morning, getting home, waking up and having to go train. It does become hard. For my fight camp, I literally had no days off. If I wasn’t training, I was working. If I wasn’t working, I was training. It got hard, but like I said, it’s doable. You’ve got to keep at it.”
