The UFC has a major problem.
The Isaac Dulgarian vs. Yadier del Valle bout, which took place on the main card of UFC Vegas 110 this past weekend (Sat., Nov. 1, 2025) inside the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada, is the source of growing controversy and alleged fight-fixing. Dulgarian — known for his fast starts and explosive wrestling — took a terrible shot early in the fight, allowed del Valle to take his back, and then offered pitiful defense en route to a first-round submission loss.
At first glance,
it was just a bad performance. However, irregular line movement and some massive bets on the side of del Valle raised alarms before the unusually bad showing from Dulgarian. The whole situation was so sketchy that multiple sports books issued refunds to Dulgarian bettors.
UFC has promised to thoroughly investigate the matter, and Dulgarian has already been released from the promotional roster. This is not the first betting scandal to rock the UFC, however, as many remember the downfall of James Krause, which resulted from the 2022 Darrick Minner vs. Shayilan Nuerdanbieke incident. In that bout, Minner showed up injured and was quickly finished, and multiple lifetime bans were handed out to those with insider information regarding his handicap.
Now fans have to wonder: how deep does the rabbit hole go?
On Monday, two athletes on the UFC roster came forward and revealed they were offered to throw fights. In since-deleted posts on X, Bantamweight veteran Vince Morales wrote, “All this throwing the fight stuff is crazy! I’ve been approached about doing it and it’s not something I could live with … even though I ended up losing the damn fight anyways.”
He claims he was offered $70,000 to take the dive.
Strawweight talent Vanessa Demopoulos echoed a similar statement in a comment on Instagram. She wrote, “Yeah people have approached me to throw fights also. My integrity could never. We’ve spent our lives learning skills and honoring this sport. Can’t believe people compromise their morels [sic] like this.”
In such an individual sport filled with broke fighters, it’s easy to see how athletes could be manipulated into fixing fights, whether that means taking a dive outright or stretching fights to the scorecards to help fulfill prop bets. Then, there’s the grey area of injured athletes and who’s aware of that situation … or bizarre circumstances of insider information like when Jared Gordon was hit by a car the day before competition.
Stay tuned for further developments on this developing controversy.
