The world of combat sports is one that has a rather checquered past and there are many instances of fight fixing for gambling purposes. There have been a ton of movies made about this and a bunch of people have been busted doing exactly this sort of thing.
A team sport is far more difficult to "fix" because if only one player is in on it and the others aren't, it isn't exactly easy for them to do what is necessary for their team to lose or to win by only a certain number of points. In fights though, all it takes is enough money in the background and anyone can probably be bought off.
There haven't been very many instances that come to mind in UFC where this seems as though it was definitely the case but there was a perfect mix of things that happened in a recent UFC Fight Night.
It is normal in the gambling world for betting odds to change over time. On tuesday your guy might be a 2:1 favorite and because of betting patterns or the amount of money that has been put down on one particular side of this betting equation, these odds will change because casinos and the bookmaking industry generally speaking is very intelligent and has mathematical formulas in place that insures that outside of really rare situations such as shock upsets in football, that the "house will always win."
Well when Isaac Dulgarian tapped out to Yadier del Valle yesterday, things were already suspicious for a couple of reasons: one, Dulgarian on paper and by past performance is a much better fighter than del Valle, and the submission that Dulgarian got caught it was something that all jiu-jitsu and wrestling experts are agreeing was something that anyone with even a low-level of proficiency in either could have avoided.
So he had a bad night and that's all right?
Well not really.
Dulgarian had been a heavy favorite going into this fight but at the 11th hour just before the fight a bunch of rather large bets started being placed for a del Valle victory. Ok, this could be organic as well but upon even further review, many of the large bets in this category went for an even higher payout by selecting how del Valle would win, and in what exact round.
They were picking del Valle to win by submission in the first round.
When I was involved in actual fighting there wasn't a lot of submitting going on, but I do have some experience in doing it. To me, it appears as though there were multiple opportunities for Dulgarian to get out of this hold.
It wasn't just that though. Dulgarian, who is normally quite good at standup and takedown defense, didn't seem to be really trying at either during this fight.
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His punches and kicks seemed to be "pulled" meaning intentionally weak, and when del Valle went in for takedowns, he didn't really seem to be fully defending against them.
The biggest problem here isn't a poor performance it is the poor performance combined with a very suspicious amount of last-minute bets for a 1st round finish. The fact that this all happened at the final moments before the fight began and therefore before the oddsmakers could have an opportunity to change the betting lines, makes it even more suspect.
Although they do not even have the proof necessary as of yet, and are quite unlikely to find it, several large online betting agencies automatically refunded all Dulgarian bets but still paid out the de Valle ones. They probably wanted to cancel both but you can't just do that as a bookmaker otherwise they would just cancel bets on fights anytime the house lost.
Dulgarian was unceremoniously released from his UFC contract immediately following the match as well. His fight purse is also being withheld pending and investigation.
He will no doubt attempt to claim innocence, but there is also a full investigation going on to who it is exactly that placed these last minute bets. If it turns out that the people who placed the bets are associated with Dulgarian, he and they could be looking at extensive criminal charges.
Something that affects UFC negatively about this, and a reason why they might try to make this quietly go away and refuse to answer questions about it, is the fact that UFC regularly promotes gambling during their events and even allows live betting after a fight has already begun. Draft Kings is the name of one of them, and they are heavily featured before, after, and during all UFC events.
If the gambling world gets rocked by this, so will the UFC.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this but unless you really dig, I think the answer will likely be "absolutely nothing."