The UFC released a statement on Monday saying their betting integrity partner, Don Best Sports, would conduct a thorough review of the facts and report its findings, but they had no reason to believe either fighter or anyone associated with their teams behaved in an unethical or irresponsible manner.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this story, though, is Minner's head coach James Krause. Krause hosts an MMA betting podcast and has a Discord channel where he gives out betting advice on fights. He has publicly claimed he's made more money betting on fights than he made as a fighter. The UFC announced on 10/17 that fighters and their teams were prohibited from wagering on fights. Sometime before then, Krause was removed from being a co-host on ESPN's MMA betting show, and, while nothing has publicly come out saying this is true, there have been lots of rumors going around that Krause was trying to set up fighters with offshore betting accounts where he would make wagers on fights for them and take a percentage of the profits, while paying back any losses, which sounds like a dangerous scheme. This was all going on around the time the UFC sent out the memo prohibiting betting on fights.
A source with Minner's camp told ESPN that Minner's left knee was absolutely injured going into the fight. Joey Odessa, a longtime MMA oddsmaker, told ESPN that all of the late betting didn't mean the fix was in, but rather someone definitely knew something. It seems very clear that word got out somehow about Minner's knee injury and people took advantage of it, and it was very likely Nuerdanbieke had nothing to do with the situation. Whatever else happens remains to be seen, but there are a lot of signs that at least someone on Minner's side had something to do with the late surge in betting.
