In an interview with The Monsters in Orlando radio show on Monday, October 6th, Seth Petruzelli hinted that EliteXC promoters may have tried to rig the fight between him and Kimbo Slice.  Petruzelli said,

Ther promoter kind of hinted to me, and they gave me the money to stand and trade with him.  They didn’t want me to take him down, let’s just put it that way.  It was worth my while to try to stand up and punch with him.

The decision to stand up and punch it out with Kimbo definitely made the fight favorable for Kimbo, who is famous for his backyard street brawls.  A factor that Petruzelli took into consideration himself before the fight saying that his original plan was to get Kimbo to the ground and exploit his weak wrestling skills and submission defense, since Kimbo out weighed him by 30 pounds and it didn’t make sense to try and punch it out.  However, in the end Petruzelli decided to punch it out and it only took 12 punches and 14 seconds to TKO Kimbo.

If these allegations are true and EliteXC did give Petruzelli money to fight in a way making the fight favorable for Kimbo it can be a devastating blow to the MMA world.  They are already trying to prove that they are not scripted or fake like professional wrestling.

EliteXC has denied these accusations and Seth Petruzelli claims that he got the story confused.  Seth said,

What that meant was they offer a knockout bonus, submission bonuses, fight of the night bonuses.  I think it just got misconstrued.  I wanted to have an exciting fight and I wanted the knock out bonus so I wanted to keep it standing.

As a MMA fan myself, I prefer to see the ground fighting and submissions more than the standing exchange of punches.  It show their knowledge of mixed martial arts.  If I wanted to watch two guys exchange punches, I would watch boxing.  What do you think?  Did they try to rig this fight?  Have all of Kimbo’s fights been rigged?