I’ve been involved, in and around Mma for a good ten years. One of the things I’ve noticed that has never really changed about it is people shouting “fix” at any available opportunity.
A lot of times something strange happens in a fight, (guess what? strange things do sometimes ‘just happen’ in fights and I feel like screaming ‘take off your tin foil hat, take your medication and calm the fuck down’). A good example of this is Rich Franklin v’s Ken Shamrock. If you look at this fight, Ken just seems to fall to his knees while Franklin then lands a couple of heavy shots and finishes the fight. People cried out ‘fix’ straight away. I admit, it did look weird but to actually assume it’s a fix out of looking a bit weird doesn’t make sense. You have to first ask the question, who other than Franklin would benefit from risking everything the UFC has built up and its reputation? What would be the purpose? Franklin won a fight he should’ve won anyway, so who would’ve gained in ‘fixing’ it?
Generally I think there are very few legitimate fixes. I’ll talk about a few below and two of the fights have the same person in them.
In my own career, no MMA Fight Organisation or promoter has ever asked me to throw a fight. It has never happened and I would be shocked if it did.The most that has been asked of me was when I was fighting in Japan (what I was asked was nothing like being asked to throw a fight- but I mention it to let you know the type of things a fight org might say to a fighter). I was asked, badgered and generally pestered to do the ‘gong and dash’ (running at my opponent at the sound of the bell). This was at a time I didn’t really want to do it, since people had got wise to it and I was getting caught out as I rushed them. But I was never threatened or forced to do it.
I was offered a KO bonus against Kimbo (which I had never been offered before for Elite XC) but I can’t see anything wrong with this, although it could be seen as a way to steer the fight in a certain direction. All fights come with these sorts of incentives these days.
