From time to time, allegations of fight fixing have reared their ugly head in mixed martial arts (MMA) over the years, but in the vast majority of occasions, it’s been little more than wishful thinking. After all, you only need to look at the medical suspension lists after any major event to see that the […]
From time to time, allegations of fight fixing have reared their ugly head in mixed martial arts (MMA) over the years, but in the vast majority of occasions, it’s been little more than wishful thinking.
After all, you only need to look at the medical suspension lists after any major event to see that the only fixes going on are to the broken bones and other assorted ailments that are part of a full-contact sport that lives up to the mantra of being ‘As Real As It Gets’.
That being said, particularly in the early years of the sport, and more often than not in Japan, there have been serious allegations of fight fixing that go beyond the realms of just baseless speculation.
In this article we’ll home in on 10 instances of such scandals, seeking to avoid guesswork where possible by focusing on firsthand accounts of shameful behind-the-scenes corruption that led to the line between reality and fiction becoming distorted and threatened to tarnish the sport’s credbility.
Ken Shamrock vs. Minoru Suzuki II
In 1995, Ken Shamrock was the ‘King Of Pancrase’ titleholder, but was also about to fight Dan Severn for the UFC 6 superfight championship title.
Rumors suggest that Pancrase’s head honcho’s were concerned that it would reflect badly on their promotion if he lost in the Octagon while still being their champion as so asked him to throw his next fight with Pancrase co-owner Minoru Suzuki.
In the fight at Pancrase: Eye Of The beast 4, Suzuki miraculously escapes a fully extended armbar, gets on top and then submits Shamrock soon after with a kneebar just 2:14 minutes into the fight.
There’s no official proof that the fight was fixed, but when asked point-blank to confirm long-standing rumors that it was a fix during an interview by ugo.com, Shamrock’s non-answer told fans all they needed to know.
”I can’t really talk about those things because of agreements and things that were set down by the organization,” Shamrock stated.
Believe it or not, there was a time long, long ago when Tito Ortiz was something other than a dopey, stuttering mass of injury excuses and self-congratulatory speeches — “The pre-Jenna Era,” as it’s sometimes called. Yes, “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” preferred to let his fists, knees, and elbows do the talking for him back in the late nineties/early aughts, and we respected him so, so much more for it. Of course, he got off to a rough start in his first night as a professional fighter, when he kneed Guy Mezger into submission and *still* lost at UFC 13 on May 30th, 1997 — 17 years ago today.
To be fair, Ortiz’s actual MMA/UFC debut came just hours earlier, and ended in a 31-second TKO of Wes Albritton. But it was his main event showdown with Mezger, a Pancrase veteran and member of the Lion’s Den camp, that would go down as the first of many controversial moments in the future Hall of Famer’s career.
After besting Mezger on the feet in the early-going and brushing off his takedown attempts, Ortiz unleashed a vicious barrage of knees to Mezger’s noggin’, eliciting what many believed (ringside announcers Bruce Beck and Jeff Blatnick included) to be a tap from Mezger. Big John McCarthy would eventually intervene to check the cuts on Mezger’s head, where he would clarify his belief that Mezger was not tapping, but rather attempting to block Ortiz’s knees (a fact that remains disputed to this day). In any case, Big John would restart things on the feet and Mezger would secure a fight-ending guillotine shortly thereafter, sparking a decade-long rivalry between Ortiz and the Shamrock brothers.
After the jump: A collection of full fight videos from UFC 13, including the UFC/MMA debut of fellow HOFer Randy Couture, Vitor Belfort vs. Tank Abbott, and Enson Inoue vs. Royce Alger.
Believe it or not, there was a time long, long ago when Tito Ortiz was something other than a dopey, stuttering mass of injury excuses and self-congratulatory speeches — “The pre-Jenna Era,” as it’s sometimes called. Yes, “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” preferred to let his fists, knees, and elbows do the talking for him back in the late nineties/early aughts, and we respected him so, so much more for it. Of course, he got off to a rough start in his first night as a professional fighter, when he kneed Guy Mezger into submission and *still* lost at UFC 13 on May 30th, 1997 — 17 years ago today.
To be fair, Ortiz’s actual MMA/UFC debut came just hours earlier, and ended in a 31-second TKO of Wes Albritton. But it was his main event showdown with Mezger, a Pancrase veteran and member of the Lion’s Den camp, that would go down as the first of many controversial moments in the future Hall of Famer’s career.
After besting Mezger on the feet in the early-going and brushing off his takedown attempts, Ortiz unleashed a vicious barrage of knees to Mezger’s noggin’, eliciting what many believed (ringside announcers Bruce Beck and Jeff Blatnick included) to be a tap from Mezger. Big John McCarthy would eventually intervene to check the cuts on Mezger’s head, where he would clarify his belief that Mezger was not tapping, but rather attempting to block Ortiz’s knees (a fact that remains disputed to this day). In any case, Big John would restart things on the feet and Mezger would secure a fight-ending guillotine shortly thereafter, sparking a decade-long rivalry between Ortiz and the Shamrock brothers.
Ortiz wasn’t the only future Hall of Famer making both his promotional and professional debut that night. Up in the heavyweight division, Randy Couture would breeze past Tony Halme and Steve Graham to win the evening’s heavyweight tournament, finishing both men in less than 5 minutes total fight time. As luck would have it, Ortiz and Couture would meet in the octagon some six years later at UFC 44, with the light heavyweight title on the line. It would not end well for Ortiz.
But that was then, this is now, and tomorrow is yesterday (or something like that), so check out videos of Couture’s tournament-winning fights, as well as Ortiz’s quick win over Albritton and a few other select fights from UFC 13 below, courtesy of Vimeo user Diesel Strongboy.
In spite of the fact that Guy Mezger retired seven years ago this month from active MMA competition, the former Lion’s Den fighter proved recently that he is still a badass.
Mezger, who is the president of HDNet, stepped in to offer assistance to a woman who was being roughed up by her boyfriend outside a Dallas sports store the week before Christmas and soon found himself in a fight with the angry beau.
According to the UFC 13 tournament winner, most of the onlookers just stood and gawked as the angry man repeatedly pushed the terrified woman to the ground while hurling obscenities at her, so he decided to try to diffuse the situation by stepping in between the pair and talking it out with the attacker. The next thing he knew, the guy was rushing him.
Big mistake.
“He wasn’t a big guy. He was maybe 150, 160 pounds. I’m presently about 200, 210 give or take, so I figured my physical size would be somewhat intimidating to him, which it wasn’t. I said, ‘Listen, the cops are called,’ and he said, ‘You called the cops?’ I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and he starts coming at me. It’s funny because he didn’t know how to fight,” he explained to radio host Bob Carson onCarson’s Corner last night. “It was hilarious, actually. I just kind of grabbed him and held onto him with an overhook on the right side and he was trying to hit me with his left. Im like, ‘Hey buddy, settle down…calm down,’ and all this stuff. He tried to bite at me and then he tried to grab my nuts with his left hand. The I just had enough, so I did a head-and-arm-throw. [It’s] one of my better throws. We hit the concrete and it knocked him out.”
In spite of the fact that Guy Mezger retired seven years ago this month from active MMA competition, the 44-year-old former Lion’s Den fighter proved recently that he is still a badass.
Mezger, who is the president of HDNet, stepped in to offer assistance to a woman who was being roughed up by her boyfriend outside a Dallas sports store the week before Christmas and soon found himself in a fight with the angry beau.
According to the UFC 13 tournament winner, most of the onlookers just stood and gawked as the angry man repeatedly pushed the terrified woman to the ground while hurling obscenities at her, so he decided to try to diffuse the situation by stepping in between the pair and talking it out with the attacker. The next thing he knew, the guy was rushing him.
Big mistake.
“He wasn’t a big guy. He was maybe 150, 160 pounds. I’m presently about 200, 210 give or take, so I figured my physical size would be somewhat intimidating to him, which it wasn’t. I said, ‘Listen, the cops are called,’ and he said, ‘You called the cops?’ I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and he starts coming at me. It’s funny because he didn’t know how to fight,” he explained to radio host Bob Carson onCarson’s Corner last night. “It was hilarious, actually. I just kind of grabbed him and held onto him with an overhook on the right side and he was trying to hit me with his left. Im like, ‘Hey buddy, settle down…calm down,’ and all this stuff. He tried to bite at me and then he tried to grab my nuts with his left hand. The I just had enough, so I did a head-and-arm-throw. [It’s] one of my better throws. We hit the concrete and it knocked him out.”
After the brief “fight,” Mezger went to check on the woman to make sure she knew she was safe now and to see if she was hurt. In the meantime, the guy he just KO’ed came to and was even more incensed than he was before.
“I didn’t expect him to get up. I figured [he’d do] one of two things: he’s either back off and talk shit, which I expected because he got handled pretty east, or he’s coming. I was acting like I wasn’t really paying attention, but I was paying attention. Somehow in there he pulled a knife out, but I really didn’t see it because I really was paying attention up until then. I work with law enforcement and I work with our military. I have a contracting company that teaches hand-to-hand [combat]. I might even consider myself an expert at it. I didn’t see him pull it out,” he recalled. “He came at me and I knew he was coming, so I kind of pushed him away and side-stepped. He was throwing a really kind of wild punch, which I thought was a punch — I didn’t know he had a knife in his hand — and I kind of blocked it with my left and hit him with the right and knocked him out again. When he fell down, the knife fell out of his hand and I was like, ‘Oh, shit. I got lucky. I could have got stuck.’ I didn’t even see it. When I looked at my hand I saw a little bit of blood, so I just put pressure on it. I didn’t realize how bad it was.”
The crazy thing is, in spite of getting KTFO TWICE, the dude woke up and tried to attack Guy again.
“I went back over to the girl and picked her up because I accidentally pushed her when I was trying to get her out of the way and the guy starts rolling over crawling towards the knife. I kicked the knife about two or three feet away and he started crawling towards it, so I had to go after him again,” Mezger said with an incredulous laugh. “I swear to God, just as I punch him in the face to knock him out the third time, the cops pull up and they pull out their tasers and I’m like, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ I got tased for trying to help this chick out. [No], I didn’t get tased. Things got worked out. [I was] like, ‘I’m the good guy, not the bad guy.’ That was basically it.”
After giving his statement to police, Guy went to the local hospital to get his hand stitched up. That’s when he first realized just how badly injured he really was.
“I didn’t see the knife. That’s the reason I got caught the way I did. I didn’t see the knife until… I mean, he had slashed me on the hand and I didn’t feel it. It’s not because I’m a tough guy, I just really seriously, honestly didn’t feel it. This is the most amazing thing because he sliced through three of my tendons [of my hand] and it never hurt. When I went to the emergency room, I was just trying to get in there and get out because my son had a soccer game and I didn’t want to miss it and I also had my company’s — my company that I own’s Christmas party. I was the only one in the emergency room and then a guy came in with an aneurysm, so I knew that I wasn’t going to get seen, so I said the the nurse, ‘Hey, could you Steri-Strip this for me and I’ll come back tomorrow and get stitches?’ So they were like, ‘Okay, let’s look at it.’ When they were looking at it I saw my tendons and I was like, ‘Oh goodness,’ and I shot a photo of it on my phone,” he explained. “I called a surgeon buddy because his partner is one of the best hand surgeons in Texas and I thought I could see my tendon hanging out, so I sent him the picture and I was like, ‘Hey, can you get me an appointment?’ So I hadn’t even seen the emergency room doctor yet and I had an appointment with the best hand surgeon in Texas, and he said to go ahead and plan for surgery on Tuesday. So I was actually taken care of really well. It happened Sunday, Monday I got to see [the surgeon], Tuesday I had the surgery and I’ve been on the mend since then and they say I can expect a one hundred percent recovery.”
The craziest part is that this is the fourth time Mezger has incurred a knife wound in his life. I don’t even know if I know anyone where I live who has been stabbed once and Guy has gotten stuck or slashed four times. Remind me not to vacation in Texas.
“This is not the first time [I’ve had a knife pulled on me]. I had a rougher upbringing than most guys. I’ve been stabbed before. I have a pretty good knife wound on the palm of my left hand, and one on my face, and I got stabbed in the hip once. It’s not my first time, but you never get used to it and act like nothing happened. I think the reason I was so calm and cool about it was that I didn’t actually feel it and I didn’t see the knife until it fell out of his limp hand,” Guy said. “I’ve been very reflective about it since it happened because I kind of had a similar incident about eight or nine months ago and my wife was like, ‘You’ve got to stop doing shit like this.Let somebody else be Captain America.’ So I was like a little concerned about her and I had to plan out how I was going to tell her. Really, what it was is I’m a father now. I’ve got an older son who’s grown, but I’ve got two younger children and I’ve got a beautiful wife and I was thinking, ‘Man, I got lucky.’ It’s very tough to remember everything that happens in a fight. You think you remember, but generally it’s not how it really happened. I think he was really throwing that shot at my neck, which is how I got cut. Obviously, it could have ended in a much more serious situation. I’m just grateful that it didn’t.”
The story does have a happy ending, though. Apparently the scumbag with the knife had an outstanding warrant for a parole violation, which coupled with this incident will likely ensure that he’ll be behind bars for the next five to ten years.
“Your biggest fear is that the girl isn’t going to press charges, but she’s been extremely gratefult since it happened. Apparently this guy had been terrorizing her all day and terrorizing her three-year-old daughter, so they’re throwing the book at him,” Mezger says. “There was actually an outstanding warrant for him for a parole violation, so he’s been in prison before. This is not an ‘A-class’ citizen we’re dealing with. This is a guy who’s a pretty vicious little bastard and he gets to go back to prison and probably get another five or 10 years tacked on him, so good riddance. Hopefully they’ll keep him in there next time.”
Guy is one of the nicest and most humble people in the sport. He sends me a birthday wish every year on Facebook and I’ve never actually spoken to him, which says a lot for the character of a dude who is as busy and is the president of a television network. Hell, I have relatives who don’t bother to send their regards on my birthday.
Hearing that he didn’t hesitate to be a good samaritan to someone in need doesn’t surprise me one bit.
