How Askar Mozharov Faked His Record Before Fighting for the UFC

There was a story that broke ahead of last week's UFC Fight Night card that made waves in the world of Mixed Martial Arts, but it should've made waves in mainstream sports media because it's something I've never seen before.

A fighter by the name of Askar Mozharov was set to make his UFC debut, but rumors about him started to surface ahead of his fight. The rumors were that aspects of his record were fake.

Sherdog.com, which serves as the the number one resource in professional MMA for fighter's records, did a deep dive into Mozharov's apparent record of 25-7, and what they found was a rabbit hole of lies, deceit and fraud.

Sherdog's associate editor, Jay Pettry, wrote a fascinating article detailing the saga. On this week's episode of Jab, Cross, Hook, we had Jay on the show to break it down for us.

I've timestamped the start of our interview with him below for your convenience.

At the conclusion of the investigation, Askar Mozharov's record changed from 25-7, to 19-12, which is where it officially stood when he stepped in the octagon for his UFC debut.

As word started to come out, the betting odds began to shift. He opened as a +110 underdog when his fight with Alonzo Menifield was originally announced, and then shifted all the way to as high as +230 before the fight began.

When I first looked into this last week, his opponent Menifield, was a -175 favorite. He closed in the -250 to -280 range. Even at that price, given what we knew, I should've placed as big of a bet as I could have on him. I ended up sticking with my one unit bet, being the responsible gambler that I am, but in hindsight, I should've unloaded on him.

Menifield won the fight with absolute ease, beating him via TKO in the first round. Mozharov landed a total of two (2) significant strikes. That's it. His record now stands at 19-13 and he'll likely be cut by the UFC.

All of those lies, fake fight, threats, deceit, name changes and fraudulent records resulted in an embarrassing one round performance in the UFC. I hope he feels like it was worth it.

We've never seen this before in the UFC, and we likely never will again.

You can track Iain's bets on Betstamp here.