Shannon Ritch talks about those in this podcast =>
It's the Rick Bassman "3 way dance" podcast with Shannon Ritch, Dan Severn and Travis Fulton. Very interesting;
(it hits differently now that Fulton has been convicted of possessing kiddie pr0n...)
Shannon "The Cannon" Ritch is a super nice guy, a great teacher, so don't hesitate to hit him up on facebook, he always answers questions from fans.
Even complicated ones ^^
He might be a joke to a bunch of MMA fans obsessed with unbeaten fighters and perfect records because he has the most losses, but he's a living encyclopedia when it comes to the early days of MMA, and (from my experience) he's always happy to share.
Mr Ritch is one old school fighter that I respect a lot; sure, lots of people know about him, but on Sherdog when his name is brought up, 99% of the time it's to make fun of him...
I wish he could be more respected, that's for sure.
EDIT: FIXED FIGHTS SIDENOTE
On Sherdog we often talk about fixed fights in MMA, and how sometimes one of the 2 fighters isn't even aware that his opponent is taking a dive.
In this podcast they talk about how at the
Cage Rage 20
(from 2007, awesome event, lots of very interesting fighters and match-ups),
Rick Bassman was approached the day of the fight by the Cage Rage guys, who asked him to tell Dan Severn that they would throw in an extra 10k if he let Dave Legeno (RIP...) beat him up ("let him do the honors"),
but don't let him know it was fixed.
Dave Legeno was one of the promotion's favorite dudes, and after a rough start he was finally able to put a couple wins together, and they wanted to boost his confidence with a win over Dan Severn, so the money was to lose the fight, and to never tell Dave that he didn't actually win.
Dan Severn told Rick to tell the Cage Rage guys that he didn't want to do it, but lost anyway...
Nothing groundbreaking, but just another example of a fight where the winner would have had no idea the other dude let him win.
Travis Fulton then bring up something interesting, how sometimes before the athletic commissions were in place, somebody could win a fight (that would go to a decision) against one of the promoters favorite, and the promoters would just take the cards from the judges and declare their boy the winner, even if the judges had scored against him.
Fulton says it happened twice to him, and brings up the 2006 bout between Dan Severn and Brian Heden at
https://www.sherdog.com/events/NFA-Night-of-the-Beast-4648
Fulton, who was also part of the event
(he beat 1-15 Mike Kofoot just before the main event; Fulton actually beat Mike Kofoot
4 times in 2006),
claims that the promoters were going to pull that shit on Severn, who had beaten their boy Haden (was was a regular at NFA, he started his career there, and it was his 6th fight in a row in that promotion)
by split decision on the scorecards, but the NFA dudes taking care of Brian Heden were going to take the cards from the judges and just declare Brian the winner.
But Travis Fulton saw what they were doing and called them out, ruining their scam.
(From what I understand, Brian Heden had no knowledge of this happening)
