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By Zach Arnold

I spent three years of my life covering the yakuza scandal that engulfed the Japanese MMA industry. Remember Shukan Gendai’s negative campaign against PRIDE for allegedly having ties to the Japanese mafia? The scandal only brought down Japan’s largest MMA organization and the world’s second-largest MMA company. It also devastated the Japanese MMA scene.

MMA hardcore fans were very sad about PRIDE’s collapse. Yet, few people cared about the actual reasons as to why the league went belly-up. Organized crime? “Who cares — just give us the *%&%*@! proverbial crack cocaine known as good MMA fights. Who cares who is doing what backstage as long as I get to see the fights I want?”

That was the constant reaction I received while writing about the yakuza scandal. Nothing but venom from hardcore fans who supposedly care about the ‘purity’ of the sport.

You want to cut across the grain of this business and address the ‘purity’ of this sport? Let’s talk about the concept of match fixing and promoters possibly bribing a fighter to fight in a certain manner in order to alter the outcome of a fight.

After his 14-second KO win over Kimbo Slice this past Saturday night in Sunrise, Florida, Seth Petruzelli found himself on top of the world during a radio interview with an Orlando radio station. Petruzelli, who humiliated and humbled Elite XC’s main meal ticket, blurted out that the promoters ‘kinda hinted’ to him that they wanted him to keep the fight standing up. As soon as these comments were made, the red alert sirens started blaring across the MMA and general sports blogosphere. Why? Match fixing or bribery in relation to fixing a fight is a felony criminal offense in the United States. You can go to jail for these types of offenses. It has happened before in boxing and unfortunately it may happen in MMA.

Within hours of media blowback and scrutiny of Petruzelli’s radio comments (available in both written and audio formats), he started changing his tune and said that his remarks were being taken out of context and twisted. After Petruzelli’s backtracking, you could see sides hardening in various MMA media circles. Myself, along with other writers such as Luke Thomas (Bloody Elbow) & Jared Barnes (Houston Chronicle), were not buying into this quick reversal of fortune. However, there were plenty of other media outlets that were more than willing to be sympathetic to Petruzelli’s cause and were glad to push the line that the media was ‘twisting’ Petruzelli’s words from his Orlando radio interview.

The great irony about this scandal is that it was entirely created by Petruzelli on his own accord, whether he meant to or not. If Kimbo Slice had won his fight over Seth Petruzelli by KO, everyone online would have been screaming that it was a ‘work.’ However, because Petruzelli destroyed Kimbo in 14 seconds, no one was even remotely thinking about the possibility of this fight being fixed or a promoter possibly bribing a fighter to ‘keep it standing up.’ As we’ve often seen on shows like America’s Most Wanted, criminals often say and do really dumb things. In Petruzelli’s case, he’s now backed into a corner by his own words and the heat will not die down on this scandal.

To throw fuel onto the fire, Bryan Alvarez of the Figure Four Weekly publication reported that he had been told that Ken Shamrock was going to be paid to ‘keep the fight standing up’ against Kimbo Slice. Dave Meltzer, Yahoo Sports writer, then claimed in a radio interview that he had heard that Petruzelli was told to do a stand-up fight against Kimbo *before* Petruzelli made his controversial remarks during an Orlando radio interview.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a new media spin that develops every few hours within MMA media circles in order to defend Petruzelli’s comments and/or what may or may have not happened at the Elite XC event in Sunrise, Florida. The Florida State Athletic Commission, when approached by Denny Burkholder of CBS Sports, basically shot down any prospects of doing a criminal investigation against any of the parties involved in the Elite XC event. Could you imagine what the reaction to this scandal would be in a state like California or Nevada? It might be different. After the FSAC poured cold water on the story with their initial comments, we then saw a chorus of MMA pontificators make the claim that telling a fighter to ‘keep it standing up’ is not really fixing a fight because you’re not 100% pre-determining the fight’s outcome and, hey, Petruzelli won the fight after all!

The media spin gets worse. When the match fixing questions started picking up steam, there were commenters and writers on the Internet who tried to compare possible match fixing or bribery allegations to what UFC does by awarding bonuses to fighters for best KO, best submission, fight of the night, etc. at the conclusion of each of their MMA events. The factual and logical dishonesty of this line of argument is so incredibly disingenuous because UFC is not attempting to manipulate a specific outcome of a fight through their policy of awarding fighters bonuses. Their bonus policy is not done through a cloak-and-dagger method amongst individual fighters to try to manipulate who wins or who loses a specific fight. Furthermore, MMA bettors in Nevada are well-aware of the legitimacy of UFC’s fights and do not feel that they are in the dark about who’s winning or losing unfairly. A scandal raising potential ’stand up’ issues like this week’s scandal involving Seth Petruzelli, on the other hand, would certainly raise legitimate questions amongst MMA bettors because if a fighter is indeed told backstage to ‘keep a fight standing up’, that certainly could impact the outcome of a fight. Put yourself in the shoes of an MMA bettor in Las Vegas — you’re told that Petruzelli is going to fight Kimbo Slice at the last-minute. More than likely, you think Petruzelli has a 90-95% chance of winning the fight. So, you put money on Petruzelli thinking that he is likely going to win. However, what if a promoter told him to keep his bout as a ’stand-up fight’ against Kimbo Slice? Suddenly, those odds of Petruzelli winning might decrease in the bettor’s mind That kind of information most certainly would impact betting patterns in places like Las Vegas in relation to how much money would be bet on that fight and on whom the bettors would be choosing to win that fight.

Match fixing and bribery amongst promoters and fighters is corruption, pure and simple. It’s illegal, too. It has no place in the MMA business. Neither does mafia financing, rampant drug abuse, falsifying medical records, or blatant matchmaking involving one-sided mismatches. MMA fans seem to be willing to forgive or turn the other cheek on much of the potential criminal activity that goes on in this industry, but match fixing and bribery is something that will anger even the most casual of fight fans. It goes to the heart of what a fight is supposed to be about, which is producing a real winner and a real loser. Shades of gray in match fixing? Either it happens or it doesn’t happen. Either a promoter allows a clean fight to happen or a promoter can try to manipulate the outcome of a fight in multiple ways. Telling a fighter to ’stand up’ only during a fight is outright manipulation. To argue otherwise is to be deceiving to the public.