Boardroom talks with Shevchenko and Zhang ahead of the historic showdown, with both emphasizing fair play, discipline, and the integrity of the sport.
The UFC makes its annual November visit to Madison Square Garden this weekend for a highly anticipated UFC 322 card that was supposed to be a complete celebration of the sport. But it’s also the first major pay-per-view event since a betting scandal rocked the mixed martial arts and broader sporting world less than two weeks ago.
The UFC released fighter Isaac Dulgarian on Nov. 2, a day after he was submitted in the first round of a Las Vegas-based non-major bout that was flagged for suspicious betting activity hours before the fight. The UFC was reportedly aware of this and spoke to Dulgarian’s camp, yet the fight still went on. The UFC said it works with independent regulator IC360 and stressed the importance of integrity in the sport, while league president Dana White confirmed that the FBI is investigating fight-fixing allegations and said, “If you try to do this, we will be your worst enemy. We will immediately go after you, guns blazing with the FBI, and do everything we can to make sure you go to prison.”
Fight fixing was far from the focus for the competitors slated to go head to head in the co-main event, where Zhang Weili is moving up in weight class to face flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko in a battle between the top-ranked women’s fighters in the UFC’s official pound-for-pound rankings. In separate interviews, the fighters both told me that they’ve never fixed matches, nor have they been approached in that way in the past.
“Sport is what we are here for, and that’s why we got all the anti-doping and anti-betting controls,” Shevchenko told Boardroom. “That’s why we have all rules and regulations that all of us have to follow. It’s most important to win in a fair fight.”
While UFC is trying to do its best to protect itself as betting-related scandals pile up across the NBA, MLB, college basketball, and other leagues, Zhang said it’s ultimately up to the athletes themselves to resist temptation.
“They have to be self-disciplined,” she told Boardroom through an interpreter. “They have to make the right decision for themselves.”
The college basketball betting scandal involved former players from smaller Division I schools who weren’t making the millions in NIL money that big-name superstars were pulling in, but even wealthy athletes have been sucked in. Cleveland Guardians reliever Emmanuel Clase was slated to make $6.4 million next season before he was arrested on charges that he conspired with gamblers to intentionally throw balls out of the strike zone. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was making $26.6 million this season before he was arrested last month for relaying and profiting from insider information to bettors who wagered on legal sportsbooks.
For fighters who are making a fraction of what Rozier and Clase are pulling in, especially in the lower rungs of UFC and MMA, it would appear to be extremely alluring and enticing for a fighter to throw a match and potentially earn a windfall far greater than what they would make by fighting clean.
“I was nobody. I was poor. I was financially disadvantaged,” Zhang said, “but I never thought about doing things like that. I just tried to wait and work my way up.”
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Both Zhang and Shevchenko have risen through the ranks over the years to become not just the top two female fighters in the world right now, but perhaps in the history of the UFC. Neither is taking their opponent lightly on Saturday.
While Shevchenko has mainly mastered all the MMA techniques at 37 years old, she said she has trained diligently to maintain her top form, while also picking up a modern wrinkle or two lately that she didn’t want to disclose leading up to fight night. For Zhang, she said going up in weight class is actually easier for her in fight prep because she neither has to shed any pounds nor limit her muscle growth.
Both fighters are hyped to fight at such a historic venue like Madison Square Garden, where legends of the sport have both triumphed and faltered, and photos of the most iconic athletes and entertainers are displayed on the walls throughout the arena. With the UFC and MMA world watching and hopeful that this pay-per-view card can help the sport move past a scandal from two weeks ago that everyone hopes is a mere blip rather than a sign of things to come, Shevchenko and Zhang will step into the octagon on Saturday night to prove who is the baddest woman on the planet right now.
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