A typical UFC broadcast on ESPN is now shrouded in an alleged fight-fixing scandal.
The No. 1 broadcast for UFC “Fight Night: Garcia vs. Onama” was going as typically as any other event at the UFC Apex until the fourth-to-last fight took place.
The outcome of that fight, however, had UFC President Dana White immediately on the phone with federal authorities.
‘Are you injured? Do you owe anybody money?’
It turns out that White already had his eye on the match between fighters Yadier del Valle and Isaac Dulgarian. Specifically, White and the UFC had already contacted Dulgarian after getting word of suspicious bets placed against the Kansas City, Missouri, native, who was a healthy favorite to win the fight.
“About one o’clock that day — we’re with a company called IC360, and they are the best bet-monitoring company in the business — and they reached out to us and they told us that there was some unusual action going on with that fight,” White told TMZ Sports.
White continued, “Do we know anything? We didn’t, so what we did was we called the fighter and his lawyer and said, ‘What’s going on? There’s some weird action going on in your [fight]. Are you injured? Do you owe anybody money? Has anybody approached you to, you know,’ and the kid said, ‘No, absolutely not. I’m going to kill this guy.’”
The UFC boss said he simply replied “OK” and let the fight happen. Dulgarian was a reported -250 favorite.
“The fight plays out, and first-round finish by rear-naked choke. Literally the first thing we did was call the FBI,” White said.
As it turns out, the bet-monitoring system may have pointed to that exact outcome after an usual amount of money was put on the line.
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The fight is available online, and viewers can watch as Dulgarian struggles to grapple with his Cuban opponent before eventually tapping to a rear-naked choke with 1:19 left in the first round.
IC360’s co-founder, Scott Sadin, revealed that several factors pointed to a possible outcome in line with the unusual bets. Sadin said the company typically looks for “two strange things or more” that raise eyebrows in terms of fight betting. For this fight, Sadin said there was “significant [betting] line movement, not just on the outright winner of the fight but also when the fight would end in the first round.”
“Something that at least warranted further investigation,” Sadin told TMZ.
The betting expert explained that the total value of bets on the fight was higher than what was expected, as were the bets on Dulgarian to lose, as well as when and how he would lose. All of these factors likely pointed to a specific outcome that, if fulfilled, could signal that there was an agreement for the fight to end in that manner.
This is what caused White to “literally [walk] up from the octagon into my room in the back and [call] the FBI.”
Dulgarian has not been charged with a crime, nor has he been proven to have rigged the fight. In White’s Magic 8-Ball, though, the outlook is not so good.
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“Fight-fixing is absolutely insane,” White said. “… I’m not saying this kid’s guilty. … There’s no proof that he’s done this yet, but I can tell you this … it definitely doesn’t look good.”
He added, “[Dulgarian] and his lawyer denied … everything. … We asked them all the questions.”
Blaze News spoke to former UFC fighter T.J. Laramie, who was recently in Japan with his brother and fellow pro fighter, Tony Laramie.
T.J. revealed that before his brother won his fight on the Nov. 3 Rizin FF-Landmark Vol. 12 card, he was asked to rig the match.
“My brother actually got approached prior to his fight in Rizin this past weekend to throw the fight, essentially, and they were willing to compensate him minimum three times his fight purse,” T.J. told Blaze News. Tony openly mocked the offer on social media, having lost only once in the last six years.
Older brother T.J. said with how prevalent betting is now, even on regional promotions, it likely would not take much for a fighter to say “yes” to an offer like that.
“We put in so much and get paid very little, so I could see why it would be enticing for certain people. Especially in these smaller shows, where there’s less eyes on it and less on the line in general. I personally wouldn’t do that, but I could certainly see why someone would,” T.J. added.
Much as with recent NBA scandals, T.J. said the bets may not manifest in fight-fixing as much as they may come into play due to “insider information.”
“Maybe someone in the camp knows about an injury or something compromising a fighter that no one else would know — and definitely not the oddsmakers,” he said.
Tony is 11-3 overall. T.J. has a record of 16-3 and has won four fights in a row since he last fought in the UFC.
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The post Dana White calls FBI immediately after suspicious betting suggests fixed fight appeared first on TheBlaze.
