“Pieces of eight, the search for the money tree. Don’t cash your
freedoms in for gold. Pieces of eight, treasures filled with
emptiness. Don’t let it turn your heart to stone.”
—
Styx, “Pieces of Eight”
It is a sad day in Fight Finder history that will play out in an
article we do not pen lightly. As submitters provide information to
the Sherdog Fight Finder staff, we keep track of the details. If
the source and results are legitimate, we have no problem. If
someone tries to pull funny business, we mark it down. For the
latter, submitters are largely given several chances to rectify
their errors, apologize for them, or come clean on malfeasance.
Accidents do happen.
On occasion, individuals double down or worse on specific fighters,
where it becomes telling that this unscrupulous manager, teammate,
or the fighter themself is trying to gain an ill-gotten advantage
over the field. Some send in fake wins, others try to modify losses
to shelve them on other profiles, and the rare few even submit
entirely falsified events. If we notice a pattern or determine the
goal is to advance one specific competitor, we may make a private
note that someone is attempting to manipulate their record. Get
enough of these, and we have a problem.
At long last, we at Sherdog have been forced to publicly mark the
profiles of eight combatants based on fraudulent misrepresentation
or something worse. This does not include those that receive actual
individual FF-Files pieces chronicling their handiwork, like
the troubled Askar
Mozharov or the
multiple identity-bearing Bektursun
Kaiypnazar–more on those gentlemen later, as their stories did
not conclude at the publication of their respective exposés. While
we generally like to avoid identifying athletes who have not gone
beyond the pale, these eight men have all gotten involved in shady
situations or perpetuated information that forced our hands. Behold
the Sherdog Fight Finder Top 8.