The FF-Files: Fight to Survive
—Stan Bush, “Fight to Survive”
Kumite. Combat. Bloodsport. It’s why many of us get up in the morning. Throughout this glorious sport, onlookers have expectations of the product they will receive. Cut back to Denver in 1993, where the lathered and frenzied audience did not know exactly what to expect when the UFC first appeared. While not nearly the first MMA event or set of fights in history—read Josh Gross’ outstanding book for plenty more information about that—it set the table for our glorious sport. Since 1993, 1976 or even 1931, with Carlos Gracie vs. Manoel Rufino dos Santos depending upon the level of purism, there has been one constant: there can be only one winner. Two men—or women—enter, and one man—or woman—leaves. For that, a fight has to take place.
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Across the FF-Files series, we have mentioned this issue before, like when discussing rogue Iranian organization WGO, where we said in plain language, “There is no such thing as a TKO (Forfeit).” Or when discussing promoters that deviate from international standards, writing, “forfeits, by the way, do not get recorded on Fight Finder.” We also pointed it out along with interesting fight results, where we stated unequivocally, “forfeits do not count as official results.” It is no secret, yet it keeps coming up for some reason.
Pictured: They always take the video back down
This particular event may merit its own FF-Files piece to try to get through everything that happened. Three organizations around Iraq, Iraqi Dragon Fighters Championship, Iraqi Combat Fighting Championship and Best Super Fighter—IDFC, ICFC and BSF for short—decided to band together and use IDFC in Najaf as a base to run a triple-threat fight card. Did the three join up to pit champions against one another or stage some kind of spectacular? No. They just ran three shows in the same cage and demanded that Fight Finder keep them separately billed.
This may sound odd, but it is far from the first of this type of request. Brave Combat Federation co-promotes occasionally, and the various leagues they team up with sometimes ask that their event be registered independent of Brave’s listing. Three leagues teaming up may be pushing it, but how they decided to deal with the Fight Finder team was the issue. They picked a story, sticking with it until one turned on another like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
The main issue? Before it was removed, the video from above showed a fighter walking into the cage, getting his hand raised by the referee, and walking out without throwing a single punch. The IDFC inexplicably said that this victor prevailed 35 seconds into the first round by knockout. How did they come up with that? The mind boggles. Were they trying to pass it off as any other fight to hope we would skip past it? When challenged, IDFC tried to dig itself out of the bottomless hole it created.
Things escalated quickly. Apologies flew our direction, along with proclamations like, “I am very sorry, I swear to God, by God, by God, that a mistake will happen as long as I am there with you in the upcoming events.” Something was left out in that translation. From there, the promoter asked or disclosed the following: if we can provide him with one specific staff member to work with, if he has to pay—we always give that a resounding “NO!”, that he had fired the promoter that set not one but two fake fights that we counted, and that they have filed a lawsuit against that person. The very next submission from them? That same event, including a fighter who “lost” that did not exist. How disappointing.
At the inappropriately titled “Battle of War” league in India, a league calling itself the United World Mixed Martial Arts Association—no relations to the United World Mixed Martial Arts Federation, which operates out of Afghanistan and is a headache unto itself—decided it would team up with another shady organizer called Pro Combat Fight League. A future FF-Files entry on PCFL may crop up in time, as they cannot stop making unforced errors. This league played by its own rules, and so did the UWMMAA.
In their document, they were at least forthcoming about it. They listed Ankit Gujar taking the “wakeover”—that is, walkover—win over Vishal Kshatriya in the first round. No. Bad. Don’t make me get the spray bottle. They tried to sell it even harder when challenged, claiming that Gujar deserved the win because “His Opponent Quit before fight on same day.” That turned our radar fully on this league, and it was not good news. They burned all their bridges when we determined they had provided results that did not hold up when watching every video from start to finish. The nail in the coffin, or perhaps the cherry on top? They pointed us to this nonexistent pairing in another league, intending to kneecap another organization on their way down.
At Matrix Fight Night 2 in June 2019, Vikas Singh Ruhil of future Bellator and PFL fame was slated to rematch countryman Vikas Dahiya. Their first meeting did not go so well when they collided in the semifinals of Super Fight League’s 2018 season between the Bengaluru Tigers and the Delhi Heroes. The story of SFL and its transformation into a team-based league reminiscent of International Fight League will be saved for another day.
Suffice it to, their initial encounter was a bit of a downer, as Dahiya split the uprights around three minutes in and Ruhil could not continue. This was not the first time Dahiya controversially ended a bout with supposed groin kicks, as his previous fight before ended via kicks near Vince Murdock’s groin that angered Murdock so greatly that Murdock climbed out of the cage and bailed—that specific instance is marred with its nonsense, as Murdock and his team penned fake federation documents declaring the fight result was overturned, only later determined by Sherdog Fight Finder to be falsified.
As for Ruhil vs. Dahiya 2, the fight was on target to go down. The fighters weighed in the day before the match, and everything was good to go. On fight night, Dahiya inexplicably no-showed the event. To punish Dahiya and send a message to other fighters that they cannot mess with the plans of Matrix Fight Night, MFN declared that Ruhil had won the fight by disqualification. Big problem: the fight never happened. Ruhil had previously shared a post from his team on his since-deleted Facebook page that explained it was a forfeit win, and that is a no-no.
Get this through your thick skulls: fighters cannot win by forfeit. If you believe fight results are listed that never happened, please send the details and any other Fight Finder-related requests to [email protected].
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