Following on from UFC 321’s disappointing ending, with Manchester’s own Tom Aspinall getting eye-poked to oblivion by Cyril Gane in Abu Dhabi, came a UFC Fight Night between low-ranking featherweights Steve Garcia and David Onama.
A very unassuming event, hardly featuring any fights with real implications for the wider sport, most fans won’t have even been watching as Garcia quickly dispensed with Onama and the night came to the end, but the really eagle-eyed among us (aka the FBI) were watching with great interest as Yadier Del Valle submitted Isaac Dulgarian within two minutes a few fights before the main event.
De Valle, ‘the Cuban Problem’, in only his second fight in the UFC’s featherweight division, came into the fight an underdog. But as betting closed, his name received massive amounts of money. The strange surge caused panic amongst betting companies, with some closing down bets on the fight.
Dana White, head of the UFC, stated that they had asked Dulgarian about the massive spike before the fight and he had shrugged it off with a classic UFC answer ‘I’m going to kill the guy.’ With all of his legal obligations filled, White allowed the fight to carry on, but when Dulgarian was choked out in the first round he reportedly immediately ‘called the FBI.’
Dulgarian was cut from the UFC soon after the fight. The UFC went into full panic mode as the FBI moved in to take over, even though White personally said that he doesn’t know if Dulgarian is guilty. His manager stated that they had no idea about the betting, almost comically claiming that he doesn’t even know how to place a sports bet.
White is a classic moraliser and takes match fixing very seriously, with ‘integrity’ being the buzzword of the statement the UFC released. While they’ll take this very seriously, other accusations from journalist Harry Mac that over 100 UFC fights are under investigation by the FBI have been called ‘total bull****. Total usual clickbait bull****’, as White attempts to keep control of the situation.
Mac alleges that the FBI have flagged over 100 fights for abnormal betting patterns, and that referee Jason Herzog, a mainstay of the UFC, is at the centre of it. The very idea is extreme but the UFC does have a history of gambling issues with trainer James Krause being suspended in 2022 after one of his fighters lost in a suspicious way. This event led to a tightening of rules around gambling in the UFC with the company banning anyone even associated with sport betting.
Gambling has become more and more of an issue for sports as the rise of online betting has made gambling more accessible and advertisable than ever before. The immense money floating around in this world has inevitably began leaking directly into sports with gambling scandals currently rocking the NBA surrounding coach and former player Chauncey Billups, and with footballers being caught monthly for sports betting.
It would not be a surprise then if online betting has broken into a sport where betting lines and odds are near constantly displayed on the screen pre, during and post fight. For non-gamblers, it makes for peculiar viewing. But for the swathes of viewers now submerged in the world of online gambling, they are supposed to make watching more engaging and fun. However, it is easy to see this as a sponsorship designed to make the UFC and its betting partners more money.
Even in the last 10 years, the way that sport is consumed has undeniably changed. And perhaps we are only truly feeling the effect of this now. A study on the amount of gambling messages shown before the first week of Premier League football in 2024 was 29,000, up from 11,000 in 2023, a ridiculous increase but demonstrative of the takeover we are witnessing.
All major sports, especially those watched predominantly by men, have seen the same issues, with the UFC’s heavily male fanbase being a perfect, if extreme, example. So while Dana White scrambles to instil the UFC with as much ‘integrity’ as he can, the sport and wider world of sports braces for an inevitable rise in these scandals.
