Michael Johnson found himself at the center of yet another betting scandal coming into UFC 326. This time, UFC CEO Dana White says there was ‘zero’ legitimacy to the story.
Johnson was originally set to fight Alexander Hernandez at UFC 324 in January, only to have the bout pulled from the card just hours before the event was set to begin. The reason? ‘Suspicious betting activity,’ which means a sudden line movement that set UFC’s betting integrity alarms off. Speculation had it that Hernandez was going to fight injured and word got out. UFC quickly re-booking Johnson showed they didn’t consider him a party to any wrongful behavior.
Johnson was moved to UFC 326 against Drew Dober, only for sportsbooks to pull the fight from their websites on fight day due to an unusual amount of money coming in on Dober to win. Johnson went from -155 to +150 over the course of fight week, leading to the suspension of betting on the match.
There were questions surrounding whether the UFC would allow Johnson vs. Dober to go ahead, but the decision was made to keep it on the card. Dana White commented on the situation following UFC 326, which saw Dober knock out Johnson in the second round.
“It was zero [legitimacy]. Zero. Zero,” White said at the post-fight press conference. “And a weird post that somebody posted that a kid was kidnapped and some crazy s–t. All bull–t.”
White is referring to an X post that received over 250,000 views that claimed “Michael Johnson has been paid to lose by R2 TKO today the gang called Gangster Disciples coming out of St Louis, Missouri are holding his nephew hostage.”
That post was made on March 26th, right around when the line started moving. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the claim is true, and there’s a lot of footage of Michael Johnson hanging out during fight week looking relaxed and normal. If anything, this is evidence of how carefully line movements are tracked and how quickly betting will get shut down even when it’s wacky conspiracy theories causing line movement.
The UFC showed a lot of resolve by not pulling the fight this time, especially considering Johnson vs. Dober was part of the first card to be simulcast on CBS as part of their new Paramount+ deal. It would have been easy to shut it down, but it looks like they’re taking these betting irregularity situations on a case by case basis rather than just mindlessly canceling any fight that falls afoul of degenerate gamblers chasing some shady, imaginary edge.