{"id":279721,"date":"2025-11-13T05:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T05:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279721\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T05:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T05:21:09","slug":"i-hope-this-hurts-bad-left-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279721\/","title":{"rendered":"I hope this hurts | Bad Left Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those unfamiliar with the details surrounding UFC\u2019s latest fight-fixing scandal<\/a>, here\u2019s what happened:<\/p>\n

Featherweight Isaac Dulgarian, who entered his previous bout as the largest favorite in UFC history, sat at around -250 against Yadier Del Valle as their November 1st bout approached. At the eleventh hour, however, a massive influx of bets on Del Valle shifted the line all the way to -150. An anonymous Redditor, citing a friend who worked at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, claimed said casino \u201cgot 5 very large bets from different people on del Valle round 1<\/a>.\u201d Some sportsbooks stopped taking bets altogether.<\/p>\n

The fight itself bore out those concerns. Despite boasting a phenomenal wrestling game with rock-solid jiu-jitsu to back it up, Dulgarian shot a halfhearted takedown, gave up his back, and barely resisted as Del Valle locked up a fight-ending rear naked choke 3:41 into the first round. The fix was so obviously in that more than one sportsbook offered credit to those who\u2019d bet on Dulgarian<\/a>, who hadn\u2019t done himself any favors by proposing that fighters get a cut of successful wagers placed on them earlier that same week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was not the organization\u2019s first gambling scandal. In one of my favorite dumb sporting moments, they caught Tae Hyun Bang planning to throw his fight with Leo Kuntz, told him to knock it off, and watched as a Bang who clearly hadn\u2019t even bothered to train somehow gutted out a split decision. Hell, it arguably wasn\u2019t even the most egregious; James Krause, who enjoyed a middling career in the Octagon before switching his focus to training and gambling advice, got himself and a chunk of his associates blacklisted by sending in a compromised Darrick Minner to be inhumanely euthanized by Shayilan Nuerdanbieke<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This does, however, seem to be a tipping point. Suspicious fans are re-evaluating other odd outcomes, like the time Andre Fili, whose gym famously specializes in guillotine chokes, stuck his neck right into Melquizael Costa\u2019s waiting arms after a massive line shift<\/a>. The FBI, which had just announced a massive NBA gambling bust<\/a> and which went on to announce an MLB scandal involving a pair of pitchers<\/a>, has gotten involved.<\/p>\n

Save for maybe the Dana White piece that did well on Reddit, my MMA gambling pieces got more eyes than anything else I\u2019ve done, fiction or non-fiction. I was very, very good at it for a brief period of time. Speaking as a veteran of the field who spent a noteworthy chunk of their adult life enmeshed in it: god, I hope this is fatal. This crap sucks.<\/p>\n

I am not inherently opposed to gambling. It ruins lives, of course, but so do any number of vices with which we\u2019ve elected to trust people. It\u2019s the lack of friction that\u2019s the issue.<\/p>\n

Though I know I\u2019m going to get grief for this comparison, it\u2019s the most salient one I can think of, so: I support waiting periods for gun purchases. Yes, there are people whom no amount of legal consequences can dissuade, but the the point isn\u2019t to stop an assassin. It\u2019s to stop a guy whose murderous tantrums wear off after an hour.<\/p>\n

Before the federal legalization of sports betting, you either had to deal with an internationally hosted sportsbook or physically travel to somewhere like Vegas. There was effort involved in torpedoing your entire life. Now you can do it from your couch and half of every broadcast is goading you into doing it.<\/p>\n

The same logic extends to fixing events. It\u2019s long boggled my mind that you could bet on things directly within athletes\u2019 control, like taking the under on rebounds, and prop bets like that are only getting more specific. It\u2019s easier than ever to execute skullduggery and harder than ever to prove it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the toxicity issue. Part of the fun of sports is investing passion, both positive and negative, into something that ultimately doesn\u2019t matter. No, I don\u2019t actually think that Yankees fans should have the team\u2019s logo branded on their foreheads like a vengeful Bostonian\u2019s retelling of The Scarlet Letter, but it\u2019s fun to get worked up over nothing when you and everyone else involved know the stakes are zero. Kinda hard to maintain that atmosphere when your favorite quarterback\u2019s pick-six costs you a month\u2019s salary instead of bragging rights in your office\u2019s fantasy football league.<\/p>\n

The current setup just sucks for everyone. It sucks for athletes who have to worry about their screw-ups inspiring murderous rage from the rando they just accidentally bankrupted. It sucks for viewers who have to stomach a torrent of gambling ads and question every underwhelming performance they see.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not naive enough to think that you can totally eliminate this issue; hell, some ne\u2019er-do-wells rigged a whole World Series decades before computers existed. But the current setup just can\u2019t last. While we haven\u2019t had that sort of recent catastrophe in boxing (despite some folks\u2019 best<\/a> efforts<\/a>), I\u2019d prefer regulators not wait for one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For those unfamiliar with the details surrounding UFC\u2019s latest fight-fixing scandal, here\u2019s what happened: Featherweight Isaac Dulgarian, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,16145,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-279721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-commentary-opinion","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}