Fixing fights

[Byron Bitz]

Do you know of any examples of fixed fights in mma? The most high profile case was Kimbo Slice vs Seth Petruzelli where it came out that Elite XC offered Seth a bonus if he kept the fight standing.
I don’t think the ufc ever fixes fights but I think they do some shady matchmaking in that they will find a favourable stylistic match up for a fighter they are trying to bring up as a star, examples of this include Sean O’Malley vs Eddie Wineland and I think Conor had several favourable match ups when he was coming up, he never really faced an elite grappler. I think they also give bad match ups to fighters they want to lose, for Paige Van Zants last fight after she spoke out against her pay they put her against a killer in Amanda Ribas. I can’t prove the UFC does this but it certainly appears that way.

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[m9]

Do you know of any examples of fixed fights in mma? The most high profile case was Kimbo Slice vs Seth Petruzelli where it came out that Elite XC offered Seth a bonus if he kept the fight standing.
I don’t think the ufc ever fixes fights but I think they do some shady matchmaking in that they will find a favourable stylistic match up for a fighter they are trying to bring up as a star, examples of this include Sean O’Malley vs Eddie Wineland and I think Conor had several favourable match ups when he was coming up, he never really faced an elite grappler. I think they also give bad match ups to fighters they want to lose, for Paige Van Zants last fight after she spoke out against her pay they put her against a killer in Amanda Ribas. I can’t prove the UFC does this but it certainly appears that way.

The UFC does make stylistic matchmaking for sure.

Some examples of fixing in Pride. The funniest story from Rampage is when he talked about for one of his early fights in Pride they wanted him to lose but didn't want to fix the fight so instead of a "win bonus" he had a "lose bonus" or something to that effect. I'm sure he wasn't the only one.

 

[CDJ]

From everything I understand Japanese promotions did it frequently, and I believe the Yakuza has been involved in fight fixing


Like you said the ufc definitely will try to build certain people up with specific matchups but I don’t think they’ve ever paid people to throw a fight or anything like that

 

[Crossfire Hurricane]

Nobuhiko Takada vs Mark Coleman is the first one that comes to mind. There are also a couple from the early days of the UFC. Don Frye vs Mark Hall and Anthony Macias vs Oleg Taktarov.