The FF-Files: Master of Puppets

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“Master of puppets I’m pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams. Blinded by me, you can’t see a thing. Just call my name, ‘cause I’ll hear you scream…” – Metallica, “Master of Puppets”

As long as there is lifeblood in this glorious sport of ours and money to be made, there will always be someone trying to pull a fast one on someone else. While the old adage goes that there is a “sucker born every minute,” the peerless Fight Finder staff members are anything but. The FF-Files series, since its 2021 revival, has chronicled tales of the bizarre ranging from laughable forged documents to ludicrous matchmaking. We’ve been called saltines. Knucklehead fighters have tried to manipulate their records only to get caught in the worst of ways. Rarely, however, do the actual organizers of events get involved in the shadiness.

If and when a promoter dips their toe into the water, it is generally based on obfuscation rather than actual fraud or deceit. Combate Global, which still airs its “live” broadcasts on a tape delay, earned scrutiny for withholding pertinent information, but did not cross the line into outright malfeasance. Occasionally, vague whispers reach the ears and eyes of Fight Finder staff, informing the team that some unscrupulous act from a manager is being forced by a promoter, like a puppet master pulling strings. Most of those stories do not hold water, but a few promotions do need to be taken to task for the malpractice they have attempted lately.


Once upon a time, the World Jaguar Federation operated smoothly. Running out of the nation of Georgia, with the occasional stop off in neighboring Azerbaijan, a good number of their early events ran without issue. The details were sometimes sparse – we could never get them to tell us how a TKO resulted, be it due to punches or knee strikes, or so on – but they were always thorough and sequential. Somewhere along the way, someone got greedy and decided they would try to make a buck off of the trust made with Sherdog.

Whether they thought they could catch Fight Finder staff with our proverbial pants down, or that there would not be repercussions, the Fight Finder inbox began to flood. “Missing” fights, unexpected corrections and fighter changes started to pile up. For this small league that had put on less than 15 fight cards in total at the time, a dozen different individuals – many claiming to be representatives of WJF – started to contact us. Most were summarily rejected due to a lack of evidence, but one person in particular started making us question them: the organization’s matchmaker himself.

This matchmaker, who had sent in very legitimate information over the span of a year, suddenly started picking up these requests we had turned down. Bogus claims of fighter swaps or overturned victors came from this official, who would drop it when challenged and move on to some other claim. This peaked with the event titled WJF 19, which carried more hitchhikers than a pork-filled piece of legislation. The matchmaker – again, someone who had built trust with Sherdog – sent in this event, along with the video above that lasts less than two hours.

“WJF MMA 19 Series Result Necessary all Information is Attached Thanks,” wrote the entirety of the email’s text, along with a spreadsheet of the matches. How many fights were listed on that document? Twenty-six. We did not outright shut it down, because for all we knew, savvy editing and multiple squash matches could chop things down to size. The reviewer flipped to a random point in the video at the 25-minute mark, to skip all of the event introductions and get straight to the action. What did they find? Children boxing. Imagine our surprise when we dove through this video, and determined there were nowhere close to 26 pro MMA fights on the lineup. The matchmaker replied by removing 10 fights from the card, for a total of 16. Nope, try again. Since we are willing to give every benefit of the doubt, they tried to drop it down to just 10. Eventually, the review ran its course, for a total of nine legitimate pro MMA fights now registered at WJF 19. That matchmaker has reportedly been sacked, but we’ve got our eyes on you, WJF.

Another promotion causing recent headaches for various staff members is the Moscow League of Pankration, which pokes its head up every few months to burp out a couple fights at a card named “Level [Number].” There are multiple issues with this, starting with the fact that the first event in the Fight Finder database is Level 15. While we have reviewed records for Level 14, we could not authenticate the information nor the ruleset under which the event took place. A fledgling outfit could be forgiven for messing up on the Unified Rules of MMA when just starting out, but one that has staged over a dozen shows should have it figured out by now.

The MLP shows travel around Moscow, as the name indicates, across various gyms, clubs and small venues. We can usually tell an event is legit when accompanying posters and video are provided or otherwise available for review. In this one case, MLP Level 36 supposedly went down at the Street Rule Fight Club on March 20. Why supposedly? Look at the image above. One of these fights took place in a white and black cage, and the other in a blue ring.

This isn’t a game of “one of these things is not like the other,” nor is it a mistake where someone pasted in the wrong link, as these fighters’ names are clearly listed and the bouts are both from the official MLP YouTube page. Where did we receive this request? The promoter himself, who should get no props for trying, as anyone with functioning eyeballs would spot the obvious problem. Why did he try this? We wish we knew, but it adds an instant black mark on a relationship that is not easy to repair.

This last example hails from Israel, in an upstart league called Hall of Glory. It is likely based on the other noteworthy organization from that nation, Zuri MMA, as it includes many of the same key figures. Front-and-center in Hall of Glory is a figure named David Abisror, who runs Abisror MMA and is responsible for much of the MMA that goes down in the region. Why is this man worth mentioning? You can see him in the above photo, in the black UFC Venum shirt wearing glasses. He’s the referee….and the organizer…and the head coach.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. The conflict of interest is absolutely off the charts. The only noteworthy parallel across major MMA would be if One Championship head Chatri Sityodtong – who is also the founder of the Evolve MMA gym, a main supplier of talent to One, which creates its own conflict of interest – decided to shove Olivier Coste or Mohamad Sulaiman out of the way and officiate One fights personally. The sheer notion is preposterous, and yet that is exactly what is taking place in this Hall of Glory league that is not likely to last long.

Imagine the damage the organizer could do in fights if they had the authority to stop the contests in favor of their fighter, who is also their pupil. The submitter tried to claim Abisror was not involved, but they also had the good (or poor) sense to provide posters of the event. Those posters clearly listed not only Abisror’s name, but his cell phone number to call if one wished to ask for details or register for the event. If that is not an organizer’s job, we don’t want to know what is.

We welcome all organizers and promoters to send their event information to fightfinder@sherdog.com, but if you do what these three leagues did, expect to be lambasted.