How much was Alex Honnold paid to free solo Taipei 101?

Alex Honnold just scaled the Taipei 101 skyscraper without ropes, a total buwis-buhay kind of a stunt.

He's called it a life-long dream but did you know he was paid an amount he describes as "embarrassingly small"? 

In an interview with The New York Times, Honnold said the payment was lower than what his representatives had hoped for, describing his paycheck as modest when compared to salaries in mainstream professional sports.

“Actually, if you put it in the context of mainstream sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount. You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts. Like, someone you haven’t even heard of and that nobody cares about,” he said.

He did not give exact figures but said his paycheck was less than $10 million.

According to the report, "he will be paid less in the mid-six figures for the climb" or around $500,000, which is about P29,535,256.

But Honnold was clear compensation was not his primary motivation for taking on the climb.

“I mean, I would do it for free. If there was no TV program and the building gave me permission to go do the thing, I would do the thing because I know I can, and it’d be amazing," he said.

"I mean, just sitting by yourself on the very top of the spire is insane. And so, you know, if there wasn’t the whole spectacle around it, and I just had the opportunity to go do it by myself, I’d be fine with that. I would do that, but in this case, there is a spectacle," he added.

"I’m not getting paid to climb the building. I’m getting paid for the spectacle. I’m climbing the building for free,” Alex said.

Unlike most urban climbing, which is typically done without permission, Honnold’s Taipei 101 ascent was fully sanctioned.

He trained for the climb by studying footage of the building and practicing on the structure a number of times with ropes prior to the live event.

“It’s steel and glass, so yeah, it’s slippery (laughing), but you hold on tight. It’s not like some rock climbing objectives where you’re hanging on to these tiny millimeter edges,” he said.

The 40-year-old Honnold, who became the first person to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite Park in California, also acknowledged that Taipei 101 climb carried higher personal stakes than earlier solo projects. He's married after all and has two young daughters.

Present in Taipei last Sunday was his wife, Sanni McCandless Honnold.

Honnold does not have life insurance because he considers the industry a “scam.” 

When asked what he hopes viewers will take away from his climb, Honnold wishes that people will “at least see the joy in it.”

“Like when you’re a kid and look around and think, It’d be amazing to climb up there. As an adult, that gets hammered out of you. ‘Why would you do that? That’s dangerous. Do you have insurance?’ You know, all that type of stuff. But there’s something to be said for maintaining that childlike joy of just looking at it, like, That is amazing. I want to do that,” he said.

Honnold’s “free solo” ascent at the 508-meter (1,667-foot) Taipei 101 took 91 minutes. It was livestreamed on Netflix's “Skyscraper Live.”

Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010, a crown currently held by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

This is not the first time Taipei 101 has been scaled.

In 2004, French climber Alain Robert, dubbed "Spiderman" for his ropeless ascents of some of the world's highest skyscrapers, climbed the building, though he did so with a safety rope in a time of four hours. — Carby Basina/LA, GMA Integrated News