The Bible Of Outrageously Shady Characters In MMA

Since the start of mixed martial arts, there have been less than savory people involved in it. Something about locking people in a cage really brings out the dregs of society. And so today, I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the most absurd and diabolical in something I'm calling the Bible of outrageously shady characters in MMA. Please join me. Now, will this video be comprehensive and go through every wrongdoer that's ever done wrong from the fight world? Absolutely not. It's literally impossible. Taking PDs is shady. If we talked about everyone who's done that, it would have to be one of those six-hour-to-fall-asleep-to videos. You want to know who all the shady characters are in mixed martial arts? Open up a roster, close your eyes, point a finger, and you'll probably land on one. For as much as this sport has evolved and grown over the years, become mainstream, graced, the White House lawn, at the end of the day, it's still cage fighting, and with underground sports come underground activities. This place is a hive of scum and villainy. You may not think it, but you are chilling in the Mos Eisley Cantina all the time as a fan. Now, today is dedicated to the particularly ridiculous among the sport's many shady figures. These are the guys that the everyday boring shady types, the eye-pokers, the short-changers, the PED users, strive to be as bold and corrupt as. Now, the actual Bible started with Genesis, so I think it's only fitting that our videos start with Frank Dukes, who is really a pioneer when it comes to just making ---- up. Long before Asghar Mazharov waltzed into the UFC with a 25-7, 21-11, 19-12, and 17-12 record, hell, before Asghar was even born, Duke's world-famous entirely unverifiable exploits as a no-holds-barred early MMA pioneering champion in the world-famous yet also completely underground Kumite Tournament would become the inspiration for the movie Bloodsport in 1988, which is objectively a fantastic martial arts movie, but it is also beyond absurd. The real details make absolutely no sense. Duke's has claimed that he had a 56 knockout streak in the tournament. Now, any MMA fan that's been around for more than five minutes knows that's absolute bullshit, But the even better detail is that Dukes allegedly said the Kumite was a 60-round single elimination tournament. Rounds as in Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4. Sounds pretty grueling, right? In order for there to be 60 rounds to a tournament, there would have to be 1 quintillion, 152 quadrillion, 921 trillion, 504 billion, 606 million, 846 thousand, 976 fighters participating. That is a level of bullshit that is honestly admirable. It's so ridiculous. Dukes absolutely positively had to be included in this video simply for the fact that Bloodsport was a massively influential movie that came around right before No Holds Barred fighting hit the U.S., priming Americans to want to watch a bunch of guys in their pajamas punch each other in a foam-padded octagon. He is the proto-scammer that so many of these people we're going to talk about today took after. So with that loving introduction about Frank Dukes, let's get into our first category, the fraudsters, and we're going. Straight for the jugular, let's talk about Chael Sonnen. I know Westland's finest is the most beloved gangster since John Gotti. He was the best guy around. What about the people he murdered? What murder? But Chael is one of the few figures we can point to in this video who is actually a convicted felon. In 2006, the UFC wasn't quite paying the bills yet like it would be by the time he found himself in the middleweight title picture, and so Chael did what a lot of fighters do, got another job. And that job was real estate. A perfect choice, might I add, that man could sell shoes to a snake. To close a deal once, Chael promised a potential buyer $65,000 cash back if they purchased the home. When they agreed, Chael then told the lender that the home needed a $69,000 plumbing repair. He then gave that job to a plumbing company owned by his mom, they took 4K for their troubles, and Chael gave the $65,000 to the buyer to close the deal. To pull an infamous Dana White quote for the first and only time in this video, I promise, That's ******* illegal. So, in 2011, mind you, this is after his first fight with Anderson Silva, the law finally caught up with the bad guy and Chael pled guilty to one count of money laundering. Because he pled out, Sonnen avoided federal ******* prison and instead got 24 months on probation, a $10,000 fine, and his Oregon real estate license permanently revoked. Now, that's the fun kind of fraud, right? Ripping off banks and giving your mom some cash. That's lovable scoundrel territory. But what about stolen valor? Goddamn, that was a stark transition. but you can't talk about frauds in the MMA space without talking about Tim Kennedy. Kennedy, or as I like to call him, Tim Ken, was a pretty badass middleweight fighter in the early aughts and 2010s, most notably fighting for gold in Strikeforce twice, and then having a brief but memorable UFC run where he defeated Michael Bispeen and infamously did not defeat Yoel Romero. If you don't know Kennedy for his fighting, you surely know him for his military service, as the former Special Forces operator made a whole secondary career out of being a military lifestyle influencer. Here he is waterboarding himself, And while Timken's military service is legitimately elite, he wasn't an assistant chaplain stationed in Tulsa or something, he got himself into some pretty hot water when YouTuber ValhallaVFT, also retired Special Forces, exposed a pretty serious lie Timmy claimed, that he had a bronze star with Valor. And while it's true that Kennedy did have a bronze star, the with Valor part was not true. And that distinction is made for heroism under enemy fire. So it's a pretty substantial fib. stolen valor is a very big deal in the military community and a tidal wave of criticism would come kennedy's way after the exposure and pretty much wipe out his whole brand guys so after we wrote and produced this video it came out that a month ago tim kennedy got seriously injured doing some kind of contractor work in congo he's back in the united states but it sounds like it was pretty serious so of course all scandals aside all jokes aside hoping for a speedy recovery for him but i thought given that the news just broke i should say something so an added note there and uh Hopefully, he's okay. Luckily for Rafael Torre, when he stole valor and claimed to be a former Navy SEAL, nobody even knew who he was in the first place, so nobody made any YouTube videos about him. But oh, would they eventually? Torre, also known as Ralph Bartle because even his name is fake, was just about as much of a fraudster as you could get in the fight space. His black belt in jiu-jitsu, his base discipline, was completely fictional. I was telling everybody he was a black belt, and Eddie rolled with him. I remember him coming back to me, and he's like, that guy is not a black belt. I go, are you sure? And he goes, dude, he don't know anything. Like, it was too crazy. It was like barely, it was like a white belt. Despite this, or more likely because of it, he was actually invited to ADCC, where he got subbed in under a minute by Bo Hershberger. While Bartle claimed to have a record in MMA of 14-0, all underground fights Frank Duke style, his only actual recorded bout would be at King of the Cage Wet and Wild, where he quote-unquote came out of retirement against Big Joe Tianu in what is arguably the worst and fakest fight in the history of fighting. But we couldn't talk about questionable credentials if we didn't talk about Joshua Fabia. The founder of the School of Self-Awareness, whatever the **** that's supposed to mean, infamously became the grimmer worm-tongue to Diego Sanchez's late career King Theoden of Rohan. Despite having absolutely no verifiable background in martial arts, Fabia's brief but destructive run in the sport would see the end of Sanchez's career ruined and give us a video of him chasing fighters around with a knife. My all-time favorite fraud in MMA, though, is without question Brazilian Jamie Marcelo. He had all the classic hallmarks of a fake fighter. He was a supposed champion with an absurd record of 134-1, and of course, crucially, all the fights were underground and completely unverifiable. He claimed his style, called Real Fight, was actually superior to this mixed martial arts ----. Fans in Brazil accused Marcelo of claiming he trained Cameron Diaz for her role in Charlie's Angels along with other celebrities. Marcello went back on that and said he might have taught her something once at a seminar. And also, there was apparently some sort of controversy about claiming his MMA school, called MMA for Winners, was affiliated with Ferrari, which he then said that people got confused about a race car driving school he might be opening with Ferrari. So I guess he's also a race car driver? Is he an astronaut as well? He is a published author, I'm going to go ahead and guess self-published, and has written books that are apparently unrelated to mixed martial arts. Not to mention, I mean, why do the fake fighters never look the part? This guy looks like his doctor's about to tell him he needs to start working out. So Marcelo is just the all-time classic bullshitter, talking circles out his ass to try and confuse the hell out of people and make them believe whatever the hell he's talking about that particular day. But the reason he's my favorite faker is because, unlike so many fakes who never get their comeuppance, Jamie's uppance were a-coming. After his infamy grew in Brazil, good old Waleed Ismail, who runs Jungle Fight, managed to convince him to come out and do a bout. To his credit, he was insane enough to do it. The guy he threw down with, Armando Polimico, had a 2-2 professional record at the time. Both of them were 35. It was actually the best case scenario fight that could have been given to him, but it went exactly like you would think it was going to go. For a legendary underground valetudo champion, Jamie sure looked like he had no ******* clue what he was doing on his way to getting TKO'd in the first round. I love this sport so much. And while fraud in mixed martial arts has led to some hilariously ridiculous cartoon villains, our next category of fight fixers are a bit more of a problem. Because it's one thing if you say you're the baddest fighter of all time and it turns out that you're not, but fixing fights cuts right to the core integrity of the sport. Can I believe what it is I'm watching? Well, in these instances, no you could not. Let's talk about some of the most egregious and infamous. Without question, the most well-known case was that of the legendary Mark Coleman. Down and out with three straight losses in a row and needing a major cash infusion just to keep the lights on, Coleman did what anybody would do in the late 90s if they were a fighter. You go to Japan where there's actual money. Now, lots of fights got fixed in Japan, but this one was notable for it involving the first-ever UFC heavyweight champion. Pride wanted Nobuhiko Takada to get a bigger fake win than the one he had over Kyle Sturgeon, because his two real fights with Hicks and Gracie didn't go well at all. So, Mark was brought in to take a heel hook. He didn't bother defending in the second round. This one is confirmed by Mark himself. Another confirmed infamous fix that took place in the UFC of all places was Anthony Macias taking a dive against Oleg Taktarov in the semifinals of the UFC 6 tournament. Both fighters had the same manager, Buddy Albin, and it didn't make sense to have both his clients beat the ---- out of each other, leading to the finals with Tank Abbott. So, since Oleg was the stronger fighter of the two, Macias jumped in for a takedown and immediately gave up his neck to the shock and concern of Taktarov, who would go on to win the whole thing. So, it totally worked. Then there's the, it's not technically confirmed, but I mean, come on, category. Isaac Dolgarian is the most recent infamous alleged fight thrower. At Fight Night Garcia vs. Onama, who could forget that classic, Dolgarian kicked off the main card by getting weirdly subbed in the first minute, while looking like he didn't want to get subbed, but also totally wanted to get subbed. Right before the fight, massive heavy money suddenly went on his underdog opponent to get a first round submission, and wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happened. Dolgarian was banned from the UFC, and the FBI is still on the case on this one. I'm sure they'll find those bad guys eventually. Far more infamous, despite it being essentially the exact same situation, was the James Krause-Derek Minner incident, probably because it happened before Dolgarian's situation, and people at least know who James Krause is. Turns out former UFC fighter Krause was a gambling sharp on the side while being the head coach of Glory MMA, and that connective tissue found him and his whole team getting the banhammer when pupil Derek Minner, who came into his Apex 64 card with an undisclosed pre-existing knee injury that saw him completely compromised in just 67 seconds. Just like Dolgarian, there was a sudden surge of hot money on Minner losing in the first, And while nobody's been arrested for anything, so it's all alleged, everybody got kicked out, and just like Dulgarian as well, apparently the FBI is still on this four-year-old case. But there's possibly no greater alleged fight-fixing incident than that of Wes Sims, Frank Mir's former nemesis, when he took a little trip down to the Balkan Peninsula in 2012. Dateline Bulgaria. Late-career Sims had not fought in more than two years since his loss to Bobby Lashley at Strikeforce Miami, but he was offered a bout at Max Fight 27 against Lubomir Semyonov. Lubo was a homegrown, max-fight talent who had just two professional fights, and according to Sims, was the former muscle for the Bulgarian illicit trade operation. But given his experience, Sims felt pretty confident he could win and get a solid paycheck beating this giant dude up. However, when Sims got to the ring, he alleges that the referee was actually the promotions matchmaker, promoter, and the financial backer behind the entire operation. Now, I'm not schooled in ethics, but that seems like a slight conflict of interest. There were several moments that Sims claimed the ref allowed Lubo to cheat, letting him grab the ropes for leverage on a takedown, giving Lubo his arm during a restart, literally looking the other way while Lubo got an extra minute on the stool between rounds, and the best part, Sims claims that he never even tapped to the submission that ended the fight. Montreal screwjob style. Sims went on to further claim that the promotion stiffed him on the purse, and when he pushed on it, they pulled a gun on him. Now, to be fair to Max Fight, especially because these don't seem like the type of people you don't want to be unfair to, they released their own statement denying everything, along with their own video version of the fight. I'll be honest, watching it, I can definitely see a lot of the things that Sims was talking about. It does sound like the referee was, in fact, a major contributor to this promotion. As far as the finish, apparently Wes had hurt his ankle earlier in the fight, so he does look like he grimaces in pain and grabs onto the fighter. It's tough. That one's a tough one. It might be that he did not tap. I mean, he didn't look like he tapped, but, you know, could have been a verbal tap. But still, given everything else, I think the story holds true, at least in my eyes. But ultimately, it's a case of he said, she said by the seashore. Speaking of allegedly shady promoters, oh man, do I have a whole section dedicated to these nefarious characters. While fighters individually do all kinds of shady stuff that specifically affects their career and their opponents they end up fighting, promoters are in the business of screwing people wholesale. The scales aren't even comparable. And truly, we could talk for hours about situations like the ones Sims said went down in Bulgaria. But we got some all-timers here. Of course, you can't talk about shady promotions without talking about Pride FC, as the promotion was essentially a money-making venture for organized crime, founded and led by alleged but never proven gangster Hiramichi Mimose. Mimose was the money that kicked Pride off up through 2003, when another Yakuza faction allegedly pushed him out and took over operations. I'm sure they asked him nicely. Among the many shady business practices Pride allegedly took part in, paying fighters in tax-free bags full of money, forcing contract signings at gunpoint, extortion, kidnapping, and possibly murder, depending on what you think happened to the promotion's original president. But, you know, you don't have to be the biggest promotion in the world to do shady stuff in the cage-fighting business. Did you know that Extreme Fighting Championship, a tough boom-era Michigan-based regional promotion that is still kicking today, is a publicly traded company? Yeah, almost since the beginning, in fact. Now, they're not on the New York Stock Exchange or anything. It's what's called an over-the-counter stock, but still, they were the first MMA promotion to ever do it. What could go wrong with placing stock in a cage-fighting promotion? Well, surprisingly nothing until 2020, when Steve A. Smith, not that one, took over and immediately started committing securities fraud. Oops! Through illegal unregistered stock sales, Smith generated $5 million in illegal proceeds, which for a rando regional cage fighting promotion is way more than i ever imagined possible and after getting caught the sec brought down the banhammer on smith ever being in charge of a public company again along with some hefty fines xfc has new ownership and are no longer defrauding the public you know what's even better than having an mma promotion that puts on fights and steals money though having one that doesn't even put fights on at all that's the dream right there for a promoter you just get the money you don't even have to do the fights now i'm not talking about the GFL, as from everything I can tell, Darren Owen isn't making any money off his failed fighting startup. But the same can't allegedly be said for Francimar Bajoso. Remember him? He fought in the UFC and PFL for a few cups of coffee. Well, he's got a promotion of his own out there in Russia where he now resides called Bodow Fighting Championship. And in 2024, a group of seven fighters came forward to claim that Bajoso was booking events, getting sponsor money, then canceling shows right before the card so that he could pocket the cash from the sponsors and then not have to pay the fighters anything. According to the fighters who came forward, this happened three separate times. Fajoso denies the claims, and it appears that right now, his promotion is no longer active as they have not had an event in 2026. But maybe they're just canceling them over and over again. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But yeah, from what the fighters were saying, the situation sounded pretty rough over there. There was apparently a situation where he was housing fighters as well, and they claimed the conditions were not ideal, like rats and stuff. Yeah, not good. Of course, you can't talk about allegedly shady promoters without talking about Ali Abdelaziz. Where's Noah? While you probably know Ali as the manager of like every fighter on the planet, back when PFL MVP was WSOF, Abdelaziz served as the promotions matchmaker and vice president. The problem was that Ali was already managing every fighter on the planet when he had the WSOF gig. So you could see how there might be a conflict of interest if a fighter he was managing was getting preferential treatment over a fighter he was not. The potential for the problem led to WSOF changing Ali's role in the promotion, but there was still concern that he was doing the very same, just unofficially. But because there's no smoking gun, it was more just the vibes and stuff that everybody knew. Ali just kept on Ali-ing. But okay, gangster funding, securities fraud, ghost promotions, that is all child's play. You want a true innovator of shady promotional practices? You want the GOAT? You go to Buddy Albin. Buddy is like if Saul Goodman got into fight promotion. Remember when I told you, like, just a couple minutes ago, that Oleg Tatarov and Anthony Macias had the same manager when they had that fixed fight? That manager was Buddy, but his opus, his tour de force, was by far his mid-90s UFC ripoff promotion called Ultimate Warriors Federation. Albin lied to some Russian gangsters and told them that he had the international rights to the UFC brand, and they banked his event when the actual UFC got wind of the show and his bogus UFC ripoff logo, but he was forced to paint over it literally right before the show, which actually went off without a hitch. Minus the Russian mobsters forcing everyone to stay and put on another show for free. Luckily, Buddy and all the fighters escaped. What a caper. And a fitting transition into our final category of scoundrel, just straight up thieves. And there have been several worthy of the title of outrageous. Do you remember Brian Carraway? Well, it wasn't just a victory he stole from Eric Perez while fishhooking in the Octagon. Turns out Brian Carraway also stole Misha Tate's ATV. I'm not even joking, this is a real story. If you were around during that mid-2010s period, you know that Carraway and Tate were a UFC power couple. But when their 10-year partnership went south, things got a bit messy, as they tend to do in human relationships. And the biggest point of symbolic contention was apparently a 2015 Polaris RZR. Carraway claimed that Tate had gifted him the ATV, which Tate denied, and eventually took the vehicle from Carraway's property. Brian then went and stole the ATV back from Tate. So is it stealing if you steal your own property from someone who stole it? Well, the real question is who actually owned the ATV, and it would appear not Brian Carraway. Despite stealing the ATV back several times and making an insurance claim on it worth $18,000, Carraway was charged with several felonies related to that insurance claim, including forging the vehicle's title to make it look like Tate had gifted it to him when she didn't. Now, this is all alleged and has not been worked out in court, because as of right now, Carraway is currently on the active Washington State insurance fraud most wanted list, as he has twice skirted mandatory court appearances and currently has a bench warrant out for his arrest. At least as far as I could find. Maybe he quietly got this all worked out. I do not know. But if you're somehow seeing this video, Brian, give yourself up, son. It's not worth it. But stealing a single ATB from your ex? That's amateur ---- compared to Mamed Kalidov. This dude was going full gone in 60 seconds over in Poland, apparently. Kalidov has been a mainstay of KSW's promotion going all the way back to 2007 and was the promotion's first light heavyweight champion. He also won the middleweight title a few times and actually competed for it earlier this year. Well, he's gonna need to take a short break because he just got sentenced to 18 months in prison. Kalidov was involved in some sort of luxury car theft ring in the mid-2010s in Poland and the Czech Republic. And while it's not 100% clear what his role was based on the reporting, he might've been some kind of fence for the stolen cars or he knew they were stolen and he bought them anyway. He got hit with counts on purchasing these stolen luxury vehicles, but also arson for trying to destroy two of them, I guess to hide the evidence, Plus, an assault on a police officer. Overall, this larger operation saw 18 defendants and 140 criminal charges. Kalidot plans to appeal and try for that middleweight title again, I'm sure. But of course, if we're talking thieves, if we're talking people in the fight game that have taken what wasn't theirs, we could not go without talking about Lee Murray. Murray was a prospect that had some real potential. He went the distance with Anderson Silva once, he fought in the UFC once, and even knocked down Tito Ortiz in a legendary street fight. But unlike all the wannabe gangsters in the fight game and even the small-time criminals, Lee Murray was a real rock and roll-up. Not only was he involved in the biggest heist in the history of the UK, $64 million stolen from a Securitas depot, he was the mastermind behind the whole thing. in February 2006, Murray and his crew, along with a guy they kidnapped and forced to be part of the robbery, parked a box truck at the depot, held the staff at gunpoint, then proceeded to stuff the truck as full as they possibly could with cash. There was so much cash on hand. They completely filled this truck up, and there was still a ton of money they had to leave behind. This was not some simple smash and grab either. This was sophisticated. This was well-timed. Apparently, Murray was called Stopwatch because he was constantly timing everyone, making sure this thing went like clockwork. Murray and the crew went their separate ways, with Lee fleeing to Morocco to escape the heat. But you don't get away with the biggest robbery in UK history without them hunting you down to the ends of the earth. He assumed that Morocco would not extradite him, and he was right. They just jailed him in Morocco instead. Think I'd probably have rather been in a prison back home, but that's just me. Murray has about nine years left on his bid, and then he'll be out. And here's the crazy part, half that money from the heist has never been recovered either. So maybe Lee's got a nest egg hidden away for when he gets out. But considering this is one the most infamous heists ever, I'm going to go ahead and say that there will be quite a few people watching him when he eventually does leave that Moroccan prison in 2035. Now, you're probably thinking, okay, this has escalated to multi-million dollar heists. There's only one direction left to head as it relates to the infamous and shady figures in this sport. I'm of course talking about violence. Let me tell you, originally, this video was going to be as comprehensive as possible. You know me, I love my research. So I sat out and looked at exactly this topic. And if this wasn't the bleakest research session I have ever had in my life. And by the time I got done writing down 40 some odd instances of just awful crimes done by fighters, I thought to myself, is this really something I want to spend 30 hours on? Is this something that the audience is going to want to dredge through? It's one thing to hear one true crime story. It's another to hear a cavalcade of the most awful ---- you could possibly imagine 40 or 50 times in a row. I was feeling like Malcolm Long and Watchmen reading all this ----. If you know, you know. So I thought, you know what? This video is far better served by talking about liars, thieves, and scoundrels, the types of criminality that aren't going to keep you up at night. If you're looking for that other stuff, it's out there, and out there in numbers that will stagger you. But for me personally, and for your sake as well, I am not opening that door today, which was very fortunate it for the editor of this video richard tubman he did a fantastic job how entertaining was that give him a shout the guy's doing fantastic work here also want to give a huge thanks to our channel members your support means a whole bunch thank you very kindly fight fans hit the join button you can become a member as well and get exclusive content like and subscribe because we're the best around to do this stuff leave a comment about any of these stories that we talked about today i love reading them and thank you so much for watching have a wonderful day