How the UFC betting scandal could open a can of worms in boxing
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past four days, you will have become increasingly aware of the ongoing betting scandal in the UFC.
It stems from Saturday night, when American Isaac Dulgarian was submitted in the first round by Cuban Yadier De Valle.
After being a big favourite heading into the fight, money started flooding in for De Valle just hours before the two went glove-to-glove in Las Vegas.
It wasn’t just money for De Valle — it was money for him to win by submission, which absolutely stank straight away, considering how highly rated Dulgarian was and how highly rated his ground game was.
For him to be the big favourite for so long and then — bam — all of a sudden serious money comes in for him to get beaten, it looked dodgy. In fact, it looked so dodgy that the FBI were alerted, and they quickly informed the UFC prior to the fight taking place.
With alarm bells going off, the UFC reportedly addressed Dulgarian in his dressing room before the fight started to see if he had any idea why this big gamble was happening and, if anything, to interrogate him into confessing something — if there was something to confess.
The UFC were led to believe that Dulgarian had nothing to do with it; therefore, the fight went ahead.
As expected though, and as the money suggested, De Valle submitted Dulgarian in the first round.
If alarm bells were going off before the fight, air-raid sirens were now well and truly ringing around the world of MMA.
Dulgarian has subsequently been released by the UFC in the past couple of days, despite no confirmation that he had done anything wrong.
He’s 2-2 in the organisation, so for them to release him off the back of a loss like that is strange — that is, of course, unless they are confident that he had something to do with the gamble on Saturday night.
Now, to play devil’s advocate, there may have been a situation such as an injury to Dulgarian which he didn’t disclose. Could he have been struggling with a leg injury and told people who then decided to capitalise on it financially and take a risk? Maybe. But then surely, in the aftermath — or even before, when he was interrogated by the UFC — he would have disclosed that information?
That sort of transparency would no doubt have stopped this huge, and rightly so, reaction from becoming bigger and bigger news globally.
This controversy follows on from the James Krause/Darrick Minner scandal of 2022.
Despite never being found guilty of any crimes in a court of law, Krause, who was the coach of Minner, was suspected of being involved in an illegal betting scheme and had his licence suspended by the NSAC, along with the UFC terminating Minner’s contract and banning all of their fighters from using Krause as a cornerman or training at his gym.
According to Ariel Helwani, fighters have since, off the record, confirmed to him that they have been approached to fix fights they’ve been involved in.
UFC fighters specifically are a much easier target than boxers for a couple of reasons.
For starters, MMA fighters who compete on the big stage tend to earn less money. There are far more ‘small hall shows’ in boxing than there are in MMA, so boxers have more opportunities to learn their craft away from the TV cameras and away from the beady eyes of gamblers.
In MMA, that’s different. There will be betting lines on fighters who may only be earning around $6,000 for a fight — whereas in boxing, that would be extremely rare. Also, the fights are usually more competitive, and therefore easier to fix.
You’d rarely see a fighter priced at 1/33 or even 1/20, whereas in boxing you see that quite a lot.
So, why could this scandal in the UFC affect boxing?
Well, at the moment boxing is going through a bit of a crisis itself, with frequent bad scoring.
With so many eyes on this situation in the UFC and MMA, it might be the kick up the backside that boxing needs to start cleaning its own house up.
We are not, for one minute, suggesting that something similar regarding gambling and fixing fights is happening in boxing. However, problems like judges’ scoring are becoming a pandemic and a frequent occurrence in boxing, so now would be the perfect time for the authorities to do something about it — for example, by introducing a worldwide scoring criterion that every professional judge must abide by.
That’s just one of the ways that boxing’s mishaps could stop turning fans away from the sport.
Boxing does have previous similar to the Dulgarian situation.
In 2010, a fight between Paul Briggs and Danny Green was declared a fix following an investigation by the WA Professional Combat Sports Commission. The findings were ultimately overturned, but it was deemed that Briggs was responsible for the fight ending early because he was not in a credible physical state to compete. He therefore received a $75,000 fine and was deregistered as a boxer in Western Australia.
To its credit though, the BBBofC are on it.
In their rules, it states the following:
Betting: Otherwise than with the express approval of the Board given in advance, no tournament shall be held at a venue at which arrangements are made by the Promoter or otherwise for betting facilities (whether licensed or not) to be available either in the hall where any boxing contest is scheduled to take place or any other part of the venue. Further, should it come to the attention of the Board, subsequent to approval of a venue having been given, that betting facilities will be available at it, such approval shall be withdrawn forthwith.
30(a) – A Member shall not directly or indirectly bet or permit, direct, allow or enable any person for the Member’s benefit or gain to bet on the result, progress, conduct or any other outcome in connection with a contest in which the Member is participating or proposing to participate in any capacity, or in which the Member has any influence, either direct or indirect.
On Wednesday night, boxing promoter Lou Di Bella went into detail about corruption in boxing with Ariel Helwani, as seen below.
The sad thing about this is, it’s going to be extremely difficult for the authorities to stop it.
The people behind it aren’t stupid. Most of the time, they’re a step ahead of the people who are trying to stop it. The FBI’s investigation into the Dulgarian vs De Valle scandal is ongoing but, as we’ve seen before, this could take years.
In a time when combat sports are flourishing, it’s just an unnecessary reason to turn fighters and fans away from it.