While fraudulent records where once the bedrock of unverifiable boasts among many martial artists, the modern era of mixed martial arts coupled with the internet and video evidence have largely done away with such nonsense.
Unfortunately, the practice apparently is not completely dead as a recent story illustrates.
Today it was announced that the Canadian MMA promotion TKO MMA uncovered “fraudulent declarations” by one of their fighters and this led the promotion to terminate the fighters contract.
The claims include the fighter inventing a promotion, creating fake fight posters and boasting about winning fights that never occurred. The boasts appear to have fooled MMA website Sherdog who posted the padded record and today published this correction. If true, yes, this is fraud, and yes such misrepresentations would in all likelihood justify a promotion in rescinding a contract.
TKO MMA published the following statement:
The TKO organization has been informed today of a very serious situation involving Mr. Christ Franck. He has committed an irreparable gesture and he, and his team, have been informed that his recently signed TKO contract has been terminated.
The false and fraudulent declarations made by Mr. Frank in regards to his last four fights in Africa (that in reality never took place) are a shame to our sport. This is a first in the history of MMA and we hope that this type of situation never happens again. Both Sherdog (.com) and Tapology (.com) have also been mislead as these events never took place.
Sherdog added the following:
The organization announced on Thursday that Christ Franck has been released after creating four fake events — where he fought and won — to improve his record from 5-7 to 9-7. The promotion, entitled African Warriors Championship, was fabricated, while Franck’s four opponents had either been inactive or invented. In order to bolster his resume, Franck had himself winning a pair of one-night tournaments in Togo that in actuality never happened.
The following poster, apparently a fake, was produced in the comments section of TKO MMA’s statement:
Combat Sports Law 