MMA has come a long way since the early days of the sport. Twenty years ago the new sport that involved a mixture of several martial arts was not allowed in places like France or even New York.
Today, MMA is one of the biggest sports in the world. Several promotions hold events in all over the world.
India happens to be one of the fastest-growing audiences for the UFC. The promotion reported that India has gathered more than 100 million viewers in 2018.
Unfortunately, the popularity of the sport also allows for shady organizations to deceive and even scam MMA hopefuls.
The country has several MMA promotions. With “Matrix Fight Night” stands out as the biggest organization in India.
In a world where fighter payment is problematic even for the biggest organization on the planet, there’s a huge gap between top and bottom of the food chain even in local promotions.
While some provide exposure and a chance for a better life, 0ther promotions in the country have so few resources that even providing their athletes with Tapology records is difficult.
Recently, The MMA India show interviewed MMA Manager and gym owner Ambildhok Shantanu. During the interview, Shantanu revealed that some Indian MMA promotions are flat out scamming their fighters by lying about providing a Tapology record. MMA India was the first to publicize this deceit.
“I’ll tell you what’s actually happening across India,” Shantanu said. “The fighters across India are suffering a lot and many promoters are taking a lot of money from the fighters.”
“They are promised that their record will be uploaded professionally, but when the fighters go there after the fight, the fighters don’t get their pro record uploaded by the promotion.”
“Many associations are honest and upfront by stating that they can’t get the record updated in the Tapology or Sherdog.”
“But then some promotions tell that they will get the record on Tapology, so then the fighters travel to various parts across the nation and use their own money for traveling and training purposes, and then they still don’t get their record updated by those promotions. So like many fighters spend ₹10,000 of their own money in one fight and they still don’t get their record updated.”
Getting a professional record online is a big deal for up-and-coming fighters from India. If a fighter is able to get a winning streak going and has an online record to prove it, this could mean getting hired by a bigger promotion.
Some promotions even promise a professional record to Indian fighters, but later only updated their record as an “amateur bout”
“I like to give you an example of a local MMA promotion,” Shantanu said. “Those guys have brought in fighters to fight at their events and promised them that they will update their Pro MMA records instead they updated their Amateur records.”
“So the fighters gave money for their Pro record but instead they got an Amateur record. This has become some sort of Trend in the current MMA scene in India. Nearly 70% of the promotions are doing such things and are not doing what they are promoting to the fighters and also taking money from them.”
“I don’t like when many of these promotions make more than 2 lakhs per event but they are not doing anything to help these hardworking fighters get their records. All they have to do is update their recent information with the Taplogy and get the fights updated. But instead, they are just scamming fighters using the name of Tapology.”