Former ADCC world champion Mark Robinson has just revealed some explosive allegations that he was once offered a bribe to throw a match at the tournament. Robinson became the promotion’s first, and to date only, South African gold medalist when he won the over 99kg division in 2001, but this alleged incident took place several years before that when he made his promotional debut in 1999. Robinson was a highly-accomplished competitor in a wide range of different wrestling styles and had already won notable events in freestyle, Greco-Roman, and Sumo by the time he was first given an invite to compete at ADCC.
Robinson started out by explaining how he received that invite in the first place:
“The invite took place because they invited champions from all the various grappling disciplines from across the world. So the Sheikh got hold of our government and they, through our government (and) the president, they got hold of me and put me in touch with a guy called Guy Nevens; who was their liaison man. He invited me to the world’s submission wrestling championships, ADCC, I think it was their second one.”
Robinson was correct in saying that this was only the second edition of ADCC, as the first edition took place the year before in 1998. He got off to a great start in his promotional debut as he managed to beat Yasuaki Hiramatsu in the opening round and Luis Duarte in the second round, securing his place in the semi-final. According to Robinson , that’s when his first attempt at becoming an ADCC world champion was derailed by an alleged bribe:
“After my second fight, it was either the quarter-final or the semi-final, I was up to fight a guy called Sean Alvarez I think. Anyway, at the time he was representing ADCC. He was coaching at the ADCC club. Funny enough, before that fight I was sitting and I was about to go to the warm up area and one of the Sheikh’s guys came to me and tried to bribe me to lose that fight. Offered me $65,000. So I know this is gonna ruffle a lot of people’s feathers and I’m gonna get a backlash, but this is exactly what happened.”
He then explained what his immediate reaction to the alleged bribe was, and how he addressed it to his contacts at ADCC:
“I just went downstairs to Guy Nevens and said to him ‘listen, if this is how you’re gonna run your tournament then I’m not gonna be part of it’ and I took my things and I went back to the hotel. The next morning he came to my room with a briefcase with a million dollars in it and said to me ‘here’s $10,000, which is the winning prize money. We’re sorry (for) what happened.’ And that was it. Since then they hated my name and hated me, and they never wanted to see me again… I left, I didn’t fight… I did not fight. They got some other guy to take my place, the guy who lost in the fight prior to mine.”
Robinson explained that he didn’t compete in either the semi-final match against Sean Alvarez or in either the final or bronze medal match. He was still invited back to compete at ADCC 2000 though, and after going 1-1 he returned one final time at ADCC 2003. That was the tournament where he became an ADCC world champion, beating Valeriy Yureskul, Vitor Belfort, Ricco Rodriguez, and Jeff Monson to win the over 99kg division. Naturally it’s surprising that he returned to ADCC after the alleged bribe, but he also explained why that happened too:
“They weren’t very nice and they were very hostile towards me but, you know what I mean, I did what I did. They paid me an appearance fee and I needed the money, so I went.”
Although this allegation of a bribe is shocking enough on it’s own, it’s actually not the first time that figures in the sport have claimed that match fixing has happened at ADCC for one reason or another. Kyle Boehm has accused John Danaher’s students of fixing matches against one another and they aren’t the only huge names that have been brought up in the past. In perhaps the most important incident so far, ADCC head organizer Mo Jassim accused Robert Drysdale of fixing matches as well.
The full interview with Mark Robinson where he alleged that he was offered a bribe to throw an ADCC match was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the LytesOut MMA History podcast:
