For most of MMA history, a fighter’s income came from three places: show money, win bonuses and a few sponsor patches on their shorts. Sponsor money shrank when the UFC brought in a single outfitter deal in 2015. Since then, fighters have looked for income they control themselves. Over the past five years, a growing number have found it on subscription platforms, where fans pay a monthly fee for content straight from the athlete.
The best-known platform is OnlyFans. To many people the name means adult content, but fighters use it in very different ways. Some post training footage, fight-week vlogs and travel diaries. Others run glamour pages. A few have tried it and walked away. Here is how some of the sport’s best-known names have approached it, and what it says about the money in the sport.
Paige VanZant: the case that started the debate
Paige VanZant is the fighter most often named in this conversation. She built a large audience during her UFC run, then moved to bare-knuckle boxing. She has also been open about where her money comes from. In interviews she has called her subscription page the real moneymaker of her career, and has said it earns more than fighting ever did.
Her page is one of the largest in combat sports. A public creator index lists it at $29.99 a month, with more than 2.3 million likes and around 1,600 photos. Those numbers show how a fighter’s following can turn into steady monthly income that doesn’t depend on a fight date, a weight cut or a judge’s scorecard.
Valentina Shevchenko: behind the scenes, not behind a paywall of glamour
The most surprising name on the list is Valentina Shevchenko, one of the most decorated champions in UFC history. She announced her page on New Year’s Eve 2024, and it is built around her training camps, travel and daily routine.
The launch drew criticism from some fans, who said a champion should be a role model. In 2026 the page made headlines again when Ronda Rousey suggested it was explicit. Shevchenko pushed back hard. She said she uses the platform to connect with fans and that her content is about training and lifestyle.
Her page is also a different business model. According to the same creator index, it is free to follow, with more than 53,000 likes and about 1,100 photos. Free pages earn from tips and paid messages rather than a monthly fee. For an athlete whose brand rests on discipline and performance, it is a lower-risk way to test the platform.
Jessica Andrade: paying the bills, then stepping away
Former strawweight champion Jessica Andrade joined in 2021 and was unusually candid about why. She said the income helped pay off her house in Brazil and her car, and covered months of rent. At the time she defended the decision, saying the platform was not only about adult content.
Later she said she had hated being on it and shut the account down. She tied her decision to personal history she had not talked about before. Her story is a useful counterweight to the success stories. The money can be real, but so can the personal cost, and not every fighter who tries it stays.
The Miesha Tate controversy
In January 2022, former bantamweight champion Miesha Tate said she would not open a page and called fighters who did “desperate.” UFC bantamweight Julia Avila answered publicly that fighters should feel free to use it to earn extra money. Others in the sport agreed with her.
Tate later said her words had been taken out of context. But the exchange showed a real split in MMA. One side sees subscription pages as a threat to the sport’s image. The other sees them as a sensible answer to a pay structure where many fighters on the undercard earn modest purses for a few fights a year.
Beyond the fighters
The trend isn’t limited to athletes who compete. Arianny Celeste, for years one of the UFC’s best-known Octagon girls, runs a free page with more than 640,000 likes. Fight-week audiences are large and loyal, and people around the sport have noticed.
Why fighters do it
The reasons come up again and again:
- Irregular income. A fighter may compete two or three times a year. An injury or a cancelled bout can wipe out months of earnings. A subscription page pays every month.
- Sponsor limits. League-wide apparel deals cut into the individual sponsorships fighters once relied on.
- On a subscription page, the fighter sets the price, owns the audience and keeps most of the revenue, without a promoter or broadcaster in between.
- Content they already make. Training sessions, weight cuts and fight-week travel are already part of the job. Many fighters simply put it behind a paywall.
How fans can find official pages
As more fighters open pages, fake and impersonator accounts follow. Scammers copy photos and names to sell fake subscriptions. The safest route is to start from the fighter’s own verified Instagram or X profile, which usually links to the real page. Fans can also use a search tool that indexes public creator profiles. OnlyFans Finder shows each page’s price, whether it’s free to follow, and how many posts it has, so it’s easier to check an account before paying.
The bottom line
Subscription pages have become a normal part of the fighting business, whether the sport’s purists like it or not. For some, like VanZant, they have out-earned the cage. For others, like Shevchenko, they are a way to bring fans into camp. And for some, like Andrade, they were a short chapter they would rather close. Either way, the trend says less about the platform than about fighter pay. As long as purses stay where they are, more fighters will look for income they control.