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The Top 8 Richest Professional Video Game Players In The World

As it stands today, the highest paid athlete in the world is boxer Floyd Mayweather. His earnings, with no endorsements, total some $105 million dollars. Footballer Christiano Ronaldo comes in second, with his bank manager gleefully overseeing around $80 million a year. Imagine that. Getting paid such substantial amounts for doing something you love every day, something that could hardly be considered a "job" at all.

4) Johnathan Wendel – United States

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John Wendel Fatal1ty

AKA: Fatal1ty    Total earnings: $454,919

Johnathan Wendel is widely considered to be the first, and best, electronic competition player ever. Unlike many of the players today, he plays a wide variety of games as opposed to specializing in one particular title. He made his name in the often overlooked shooter Painkiller, but has also ripped people to shreds in all manner of other FPS games, like Quake, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Doom 3, Counter Strike, and Alien Versus Predator (lol, what?).

He estimates he’s killed somewhere in the region of 5 million people online over the years, and if that doesn’t make you a legendary cyber-athlete, nothing does. Now something of an entrepreneur aged 33, he continues to play competitively outside of designing gaming mice and headphones and such. In 2010, he was inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame and even holds a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for most kills in 60 minutes.