Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Falcao's submission win at UFC 123 blown by timekeeper

Maiquel Falcao was ripped to shreds throughout the third round of his fight against Gerald Harris. The criticism was well-deserved. He did nothing over the final five minutes of the fight, taking the safe route to victory during his UFC debut. That's not a great way to win over the promotion, Dana White and fans in attendance.

Amazingly, the 16,000-plus in attendance and everyone cageside failed to notice that the fight probably should've been over in the first round.

UPDATE: A good point from one of our readers. Even though Falcao still got a win, the error may have cost him the $80,000 submission of the night bonus. That said, Phil Davis' "Mr. Wonderful" improv submission was pretty sweet. 

Falcao locked on a nasty rear-naked choke with 13 seconds left in the round. A little over seven seconds later, the horn sounded to end the round.

There was a clear timing error and no one noticed it.

This isn't the first time there's been clock issues in the Motor City.

NBA bettors thought there was a massive scandal in the mid 80's going down at Pistons' games.

There was a crew operating on the Las Vegas Strip, getting down all it could on NBA totals. Two things made this NBA betting syndicate unique. First, they only bet on Detroit Pistons games. Sometimes they bet 'over' and sometimes they bet 'under' but they always risked a ton of money.

Second, they were very, very good, at one point during their three-year run winning 16-of-18 games, a streak which tested the bottom lines of many books.

After a while, word spread that the Pistons Syndicate had someone on the inside. Reportedly, it was the Detroit timekeeper, a man in a position to manipulate seconds on the end of each play to either add or subtract time from the game clock. Supposedly, the syndicate bet 'over' when he added time and 'under' when he subtracted it.

The only problem with this revelation was that it wasn't true. Bookmakers finally proved this to themselves when they were allowed to review the tapes of several Detroit games. A lot of the bet takers timed the games themselves and found that there was no manipulation of the clock.

At UFC 123, there was no "inside job" to save Harris or ensure the over, but whoever was working the horn and clock screwed Falcao out of a chance for a submission victory.

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