Fixed Fights

No one agrees to be humiliated and suffer severe brain damage by being knock smoove unconscious if they're taking a dive. There are a million other, safer ways to take a dive.

Yeah, man. They paid me an extra $100K to take a dive. Problem is, I let the guy knock me the F out and now I get migraines constantly and my medical bills are insane. Guess I dun goofed!

 

Man, AJ must have thrown the fight versus Dubois. Against Ngannou he came out responsible with his defense and technique and knocked that dude out in 2 rounds. Against Dubois he had his hands down, chin in the air, and looked like he'd never boxed before! It must have been a work!

Immediately jumping to there being a grand conspiracy to fix a fight for Canelo when what's right there staring you in the face is a horde of facts about why Kovalev would be fighting different. Stuff like:

Canelo is 100x the fighter sorry ass Yarde is.

Kovalev wasn't anywhere near 100% because of the hydration clause he had to accept.

Kovalev not having enough time to get ready for Canelo after fighting Yarde.

Kovalev being an alcoholic who probably was used to drinking heavily after a camp + fight and not having the same time off after Yarde leading to him either drying out or drinking during his camp for Canelo.

The list could go on.

The fix was Canelo stacking the deck in his favor and picking the oldest, most washed champ at LHW while also sticking restrictions on him. It ain't that deep.

 

Rick "Elvis" Parker, the promoter of, among others, Bert Cooper when he challenged Holyfield, was murdered by Tim "Doc" Anderson (who fought many names). Parker was famous for providing fighters who would take dives. One of those guys, Anderson, refused to take a dive against NFL player turned boxer Mark Gastineau. Anderson won. There was a rematch, and Parker poisoned Anderson. Realizing what happened, after the fight, Anderson killed Parker.

That was pretty scandalous.

Also, Brian Nielsen was known for flying over former champs like Tim Witherspoon, Tony Tubbs, and Bonecrusher Smith, who all lost on purpose. Robert Mittleman, the promoter of boxer Thomas Williams (whose son, also named Thomas Williams, became a ranked light heavy), was charged and pled guilty to fixing the Nielsen-Williams fight.

 

Deontay Wilder vs Malik Scott

 

Floyd Schofield accused Shakur and his team of drugging him too.

The famous mobster Sammy Gravano alleged that Buddy McGirt and his team around him had been involved in some fixed fights. Mcgirt obviously denied it, and nothing was ever conclusively proven.

There's zero evidence these fights were fixed, but I think the way both Dillian Whyte and Richard Torrez Jr (both trained by McGirt) went down early in their last fights vs Itauma and Sanchez respectively was a bit odd... Especially Torrez vs Sanchez.

 

Here's a video on Gastineau.

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I would say it's like political corruption. It's not going to be likely so on-the-nose that someone is caught saying/typing/texting "Now I am going to pay you for this exact thing to happen so that this fighter wins and this fighter loses just this way." But when it comes to judges and referees, etc., there is an assumption that they know what behooves them if they want to keep getting onto the big fights. It's more that kind of corruption. If a certain news channel has politics that cut a certain way, it's not so much that they send you a letter saying "If you want to get your own show, say this about this guy, and that about that policy." It's that they know you will say that and you are amenable to the cause, in all likelihood, and you will be subtle and smart enough with the understanding of which side of the bread is getting buttered. No one has to convince you to back something for a price. You're there, the reward will follow.

The amount of cahoots between the channels, the publications, the sanctioning bodies, the promoters, and anyone officially assigned to work the fight in any capacity, and the fighters' corners, etc, I'm sure is gigantic. But not like the LaMotta/Fox days, which was maybe much just more bald-faced. But in modern times it's still bald enough without being able to go in front of a courtroom and get beyond reasonable double evidence. The way things cut for Gatti with Gamache was awful, in the...nineties? Maybe, early 2000's, I can't remember. But it's not a fixed outcome payoff either. Judging types of outcomes, I don't think anyone had a sit-down for it or anything came out for it, but you can't tell me Chisora/Helenius judging was not conducted by highwaymen. Or some of these even smaller matches like Whitaker/Fedosov, so beyond probability and subjectivity. As far as outcomes, what happened between Matthysse and Viv Harris was so bonkers I do have to wonder if there wasn't a more direct understanding, but even then, if a guy goes in knowing what call would benefit him, he might take it upon himself to be even worse and more unsubtle than an interested party might have ever wanted them to be!

But there have been insinuations that were high profile enough that were made but totally glossed over that were somewhat recent, like...this is not something that I can Google and find easily from this memory, but I seem to recall that it was Vanes Martirosyan blatantly telling people on Twitter or something verified where he said his promoter had fixed some of his fights. What I'm remembering, the reason I bring it up for this thread, is it wasn't some isolated, butthurt fighter makes a casual insinuation on a promoter to scapegoat for a single loss, but a broader pattern allegation that you could definitely get sued for if the other party wants to and has the means to, unless they're worried about opening themselves up, legally, because they know the allegation is at least true enough. Something unusually clear, the way I remember it.