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 proceeding 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?” White reportedly asked.
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 receiving 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 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 played out with a 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 unusual amount of money was put on the line.
The fight is available online, and viewers can watch as Dulgarian struggles to grapple with his Cuban opponent before eventually tapping out 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 explained, “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.”
The betting expert further noted that the total value of bets on the fight was higher than expected, as were the bets on Dulgarian to lose, as well as on 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.
“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…”
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https://www.conservativereview.com/dana-white-calls-fbi-immediately-after-suspicious-betting-suggests-fixed-fight-2674272102.html
