Zaurbek Sidakov, the reigning Olympic champion in freestyle wrestling at 163 lbs (74kg), has revealed that Real American Freestyle (RAF) is offering him substantially more money per match than what he earns at the Professional Wrestling League (PWL), putting the figure at roughly $80,000 per bout.
Speaking on a podcast, Sidakov said directly that RAF’s financial terms are well above what PWL currently puts on the table. “Right now, RAF is offering me three to four times more than PWL,” he stated.
His interviewer pushed for specifics, and what followed was a back-and-forth that gave a rare glimpse into what elite wrestlers are being paid at this level of the sport.
Sidakov explained that his ongoing PWL commitment was arranged before the RAF offer materialized.
“I signed for one match for now. That was the March 27 match with the Japanese wrestler. We had agreed on that match earlier,” he said, noting that he had since spoken with PWL about the road ahead. “He said, let’s compete here first, and then we’ll talk further and raise the price.”
When the interviewer floated a guess of $50,000 per match and $30,000 for a victory as PWL’s current rate, Sidakov dismissed it outright. “No, no, no,” he said.
Asked whether those numbers were closer to what RAF was putting forward, his reply left little room for interpretation: “More.”
Based on what Sidakov described, the RAF per-match figure lands at approximately $80,000, a number that puts it in the same territory as reported deals being discussed with his compatriot Abdulrashid Sadulaev.
Well-placed insider sources on Sadulaev’s prospective RAF terms have pointed to a six-figure mat fee plus a separate six-figure win bonus.
For context, the official reward for winning Olympic gold in Russia is roughly 4 million rubles. That means a single RAF appearance could earn Sadulaev nearly four times more than an Olympic victory.
Sadulaev has been drawing attention for financial reasons of his own lately. He recently disclosed that a bookmaker approached him with a million-dollar offer to appear in a commercial, and he turned it down without apparent hesitation.
“A million dollars,” he confirmed when describing the proposal, before making clear he had no interest in accepting it.
