The FF-Files: Taste of India

---

“God I love the sweet taste of India, lingers on the tip of my tongue. Gotta love the sweet taste of India, blame it on the beat of the drum.” – Aerosmith, “Taste of India”

Certain regions of the world present unique and challenging obstacles to overcome for MMA record keepers, and some of those issues tend to be isolated to those specific regions. For example, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States have difficulties differentiating the names of fighters, which leads to 47 profiles of men named Magomed Magomedov – and they likely are not 47 distinct individuals. The U.K. does not have a strong dividing line between amateur and professional MMA, and some fighters attempt to flirt back and forth. Some sections of the Middle East do not understand the conflict of interest in having promotional officials serve as referees or judges. And then there’s India, which features a mix of all of those and more.

Back in 2012, Super Fight League launched its inaugural event out of the Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai, India, with eight fights of varying quality capped off by a super heavyweight oddity between James Thompson and Bob Sapp. This was not the first MMA event the country had ever staged, but it was the first of any major notoriety. In the span of about 11 years, MMA has grown but not exploded in the country, and only a handful of competitors have emerged on the major stage – Bharat Khandare was the first fighter from India to sign with the UFC, followed by Anshul Jubli, while others like Ritu Phogat, Asha Roka and Rahul K. Raju populate the One Championship roster. One such name that may be on the rise is Road to UFC Season 2 flyweight prospect Sumit Kumar, who carries a shiny 8-0 record with eight stoppages to that qualifying tournament.

Kumar was the focus of a recent piece by Bloody Elbow, which excoriated the 22-year-old for record padding while simultaneously admonishing recordkeepers for allowing his win total to stand unchallenged. Another recordkeeper lists Kumar as 4-0, while not accounting for his second win in one night at the TAMMA: Right 2 Fight event on Aug. 25, 2021. The reasons for the discrepancy were two-fold: his first opponent went by a fake name to hide a loss on his pro record, and other foes Kumar fought were considered to produce “sparring matches.” Both claims present interesting questions.



For the first problem, the Sherdog Fight Finder team identified the fighter in question, determining that “Prakash Raut” and Mukul Anand were indeed the same person for the duration of their (his) careers. The profiles were merged, and a note was added to Anand’s profile noting that he had falsified his identity to manipulate his record. This does not remove the fact that the fight actually happened, and Kumar pounded out Anand while mounted with a series of unanswered strikes. It also does not eliminate Anand’s other matches, and nor does not mean that he lost on purpose for the furtherment of the then-debuting Kumar. Look, for example, to the notorious Askar Mozharov, who tried to hide losses by offloading them on fictitious individuals. The wins that never happened – such as the ones in a venue that had been closed for years – were removed, while the rest stayed because they were confirmed. That was small potatoes compared to the second ruling by the other recordkeeper, who decided to take on matchmakers around the world with a heavy hand.



It is an unbelievably slippery slope for Sherdog or any recordkeeper to go through fight footage and determine that fighters were not giving it their all. Even some UFC fights are described as “sparring matches” by those that witness them, with neither competitor getting out of the proverbial first gear nor committing to their strikes. Would this deem those bouts ineligible for professional consideration? Of course not. To state that matches are “Not Hard-Fought to International Standards” is a path that Sherdog cannot and will not travel down. We are the arbiters of whether fights legitimately happened, where we can prove their existence. It is Hanlon’s razor that states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” In softer terms, incompetence and lack of fighting skills can easily explain some of the issues encountered here, not to mention a guided hand from matchmaking. Is it possible that Kumar had a light touch from matchmaking to build him up, or that some opponents should not have fought against him? Yes, but that does not make them non-fights.



To some, record padding is a major issue in this sport. This term typically points to a skillful, highly regarded fighter taking on someone that has little or no chance of winning. MMA organizations have been running those kinds of bouts since the beginning, with squash matches littered throughout events. Some infamous promotions even make a business out of running those kinds of fights – in the U.S., think Gladiator Challenge or Xplode Fight Series. In the U.K., look no further than Caged Steel, which regularly books 0-40 Reece Street or 24-84-1 Shaun Lomas. These events happen, and it would do damage to the sport if Sherdog were to consider cracking down on those types of leagues because of attempted record padding.



Putting aside the time it would take to go through these various leagues to add them to some list of offenders, how would a recordkeeping body go about actually denoting their matches? A broad brush is wholly imprecise in this kind of analysis. Who is to say that the aforementioned Street was simply available and ready to take a short-notice fight when someone else fell through on weigh-in day? What if Jan Lysak (0-27) genuinely had designs on turning things around? Jay Ellis certainly tries his hardest every time he enters the cage, despite that he holds MMA’s record for the most confirmed pro defeats with 108. Would an entire card or promotion be subject to this adverse marking, or just individual bouts? Could a fighter’s whole legacy be tarnished because of this?



If one fighter is marked for facing less-than-stellar opposition, all “offenders” must be. As we discussed in our Matchmaker, Matchmaker piece a couple years ago, promoters or fight teams can and do stage advantageous matchups at the expense of one competitor. However, does that mean UFC flyweight champ Brandon Moreno should lose a pair of triumphs from his resume on the Xplode Fight Series circuit, given its well-known history of mismatches and worse? Will top UFC contender Tatiana Suarez lose her first three professional wins, all of which took place in Gladiator Challenge against foes combining for a 4-4 record? Do Brian Ortega’s first two pro victories fall off his ledger because he fought for that same organization back in 2010? The names are both notable and plentiful, and this type of retroactive review would run into additional speed bumps. Are we at Fight Finder to start pulling threads that would essentially unravel the sport by starting a process that might remove tens of thousands of rightful wins against outmatched opponents? Absolutely not.



Sherdog Fight Finder is not in the position to challenge whether a fight features “hard contact” or is just something put on for spectacle. The era of “shootfighting” has long since passed, and we cannot assume that organizations are willingly staging pro wrestling-style MMA matches just because the results look like two unskilled competitors trying and failing in the cage. If it is a one-sided affair, who is to say whether it is simply a bad mismatch, or something cobbled together on late notice? Khabib Nurmagomedov was 11-0 when he took on 0-2 Ashot Shahinyan and met professional debutant Vadim Sandulskiy while sporting a whopping 14-0 record. Do those one-sided drubbings qualify for the same record padding markings? In that context, they should, but they will not for Sherdog. We are chroniclers of the sport’s history, not the kind of entity that should hold the authority or jurisdiction to pass judgment on how fighters performed in the ring or cage. Leave that to the regulators.



When the exhibition label does come out for Sherdog Fight Finder, it does for procedural and not subjective reasons. One cannot know the reasoning why a fighter lost; we cannot ever assume without evidence that a competitor intentionally placed themselves in a position to be defeated. We as investigators can determine that an organization modified the rules of engagement to limit a certain aspect of fighting, and then a fight or event can be flagged. If you take away grappling, it is not MMA. Remove the ability to throw knees and elbows, and it turns into something different. Cut the time down to three-minute rounds, and reduce the rounds to one or two? Not so much. Is a professional moving down to the amateur ranks for some reason? That also receives the exhibition tag, because once a fighter is a professional, they are always a professional. Tape-delayed reality show fights? The same. Simple unpleasant mismatches, however, do not qualify.



Kumar will be fighting on Saturday at the UFC Performance Institute in Shanghai, where he will square off against Korea’s Seung Guk Choi (6-2). This will be his first test against someone with a winning record since his third pro outing against Vijay Singh Barolia. Whether he succeeds or fails will be up to him, along with anyone involved in what looks like favorable matchmaking on his way up. The fights happened, all eight videos have been provided above—and some undoubtedly look sketchy. Despite the appearances of the encounters, Kumar’s record stands at eight wins opposite zero defeats, and some observers may hold their nose at those victories. This sport has its fair share of ugliness, and it is often said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Shining a light on the issue helps the community confront it, and at the very least know what they are getting in for.

If you have concerns about matchmaking, questionable outcomes or fuzzy fight records, feel free to send the details as well as any other Fight-Finder-related requests to [email protected].