This is a good read......Betting stink over fight farce

[dave nz]

# By James Hooper
# From: The Daily Telegraph
# July 23, 2010 12:00AM



BookmakerS are calling the 29-second Danny Green-Paul Briggs sham a fix after professional punters ripped $1 million out of betting agencies around Australia in an orchestrated sting.

As outrage reverberated around the country over the farcical fight, boxing icon Johnny Lewis led a chorus of condemnation, suggesting the sport might never recover from such an almighty stink.

Centrebet chief executive Con Kafataris said the money wagered on Danny Green to knock Paul Briggs out in the opening round "smells wrong" and potentially warranted a police investigation.

"From our perspective we've copped it on the chin but it's pretty blatantly obvious to everybody what went on. It smells wrong," Kafataris said.

"It will be interesting to see how the boxing authorities deal with it.

"I've seen investigations done on stuff that's less obvious. It wouldn't surprise if there were elements of fraud involved. Too many people knew about it."


Four of the major betting agencies suspended betting on the fight but the WATAB and Centrebet continued to field money, with Green's odds tumbling from $10.25 to $1.07 for the first-round result in WA.

The $1 million boxing bookies' sting started at 7am on Wednesday, a professional hit even the old Chicago mob would have been proud to call their own.

Through shrewd manipulation, calculated planning and a dash of old-fashioned rat cunning, a select group of well-informed individuals opened the operation with a trickle of small wagers.

Bookmakers refer to this kind of sting as "camouflage betting", meaning punters bet small amounts of $50, $100, $80 and $20 at a time, disguised in minor denominations to avoid attracting attention.

But there is only so long you can sidestep suspicion with a shark-like sting of this magnitude. When one of Australia's biggest bookmaking agencies - Centrebet - is fielding wagers every 25 seconds for two hours straight at the height of the frenzy, the alarm bells trigger all over the country.

By 7pm in the eastern states on Wednesday night, the result of Danny Green to knock Paul Briggs out in the opening round was only a rort if you weren't in on it.

Individual wagers of $50,000, $20,000 and $10,000 a pop on Green to win by knockout in round one were in play.

"I've bet on fights all over the world and I've never come across anybody ever wanting a five-figure amount on a pick the round result," industry expert Gerard Daffy said.

"It's like trying to pick Tattslotto numbers."

By this stage, bookies were rushing to immediately close their markets.

Daffy had shut down his SportsAlive market at 10am, TAB SportsBET in NSW followed suit in the afternoon and Sportingbet in Darwin pulled the pin two hours before the fight.

The TAB is an easy target for a set-up sting like this because there are different arms in each state, meaning you can load up in more than one market.

And you can do it with cash, making it difficult to trace who is placing the bets.

The WATAB was the hardest hit of the TAB agencies, with 85 per cent of its $450,000 wagered being targeted towards Green knocking Briggs out in round one. This is simply unheard of.

It was so hot the WATAB odds tumbled from $10.25 on Monday morning to $1.07 by fight time, the equivalent of Sydney recording a 45C day in the middle of July.

Read what you will into the super-slowmotion replay that suggests Green's knockdown of Briggs was legitimate, but the sheer volume of money on the round-one KO implies a very different story.

Ultimately, the TAB and the bookies took a much bigger beating than Briggs.

[Eleven]

I saw the KO blow, its almost too ridiculous.

[YPA]

Originally Posted by Eleven

I saw the KO blow, its almost too ridiculous.

Minimal contact.. like brushing against someone on the bus.

[nehpets]

btw TABSportsbet reports they actually made money on the fight,
Rd 1 KO went off a winning result.
It was cut up pretty quickly once serious bets were attempted on the early round results.

[The Judge]

There are conflicting opinions over the fight, even among Australian Bookmakers. There can be no question that the video of the fight makes the "decision" highly questionable.



However, the following article provides a very inetersting perspective.

Staggering truth: cash-strapped Briggs was not fit to fight

SO SEVERE were Paul Briggs's neurological problems in the weeks leading up to his fight against Danny Green that he was forgetting at which gymnasium he was training and mistaking strangers' cars for his own. His conditioning was so poor that he took one body shot in sparring and vomited.

Briggs's woeful 29-second performance on Wednesday night was not of a man taking a dive, but one who was so desperate for his $200,000 purse he was willing to risk his life in the ring. Briggs, his people, and much of boxing's circle knew the reality of the situation. This was going to be a farce.

But nobody could talk Briggs out of the fight. He was so reliant on the money he went in with a plan of trying to knock out Green with one quick shot, and should he take a punch, give up.

He completely lost his bearings after Green landed a probing left jab to the top of his skull – a punch that would not have moved a half-fit boxer – and Briggs said later he was trying to get up, but his body could not respond.

In the dressing room after the fight, Briggs had a conversation with a close friend and later asked those around him who he had just been speaking to, such was his delirium.

This is why Briggs should never have returned to the ring, why the Western Australian Professional Combat Sports Commission should never have sanctioned it when their NSW counterparts refused to, and why the International Boxing Organisation should have rejected any notion of Briggs fighting for one of their titles. A source close to Briggs said yesterday he was "battling".

Green's reputation as a promoter has suffered enormous damage and respected trainer Johnny Lewis slammed the IBO cruiserweight champion for his verbal tirade towards Briggs after the fight.

"I just hope it doesn't get to Paul and he does something silly," said Lewis, who trained Briggs before the 34-year-old was forced to retire in 2007. "I hope he is able to move on. That is why I didn't think it was a good idea for him to be part of this fiasco.

"Everyone was aware of the problems Paul had, but they still went on with the promotion and when the inevitable happened they want to kick him in the guts.

"Paul needs to know we don't think he is a dog, he didn't deserve to be called that."

Lewis said Briggs had both "physical and mental" problems that forced him to retire, and believed his heart was not in it any more.

Green yesterday overturned his initial suspicion that Briggs intentionally went down by saying he had reviewed footage, which assured him he had landed a solid punch.

Briggs's trainer, Billy Hussein, highlighted the lures presented for his charge when questioned about the preparation camp by a Perth radio station yesterday.

"He's not gonna knock back a fight for an IBO world title ever," Hussein said. "The money was great, plus fighting Danny Green on home soil was everything he wanted to do in his life before he retired."

Hussein said Briggs did not take a dive. ‘‘I 100 per cent know for a fact Paul Briggs would never ever do that in his life,’’ Hussein said.

"And let me tell you, if I knew, I would never [have got involved with him]."

The IBO has requested an investigation from the West Australian authority. The IBO’s vice-president, Phil Austin, said the body had sanctioned the contest as a world-title bout due to "Briggs's reputation" and after being assured by Briggs’s camp via Green that he was in sound condition during training.

"There was plenty of conjecture over why he retired in the first place, but we’re never going to pay attention to rumours," Austin said.

"We worked closely with the promoters on this, who acted in good faith [from Briggs’s camp]."

But Briggs’s part-time trainer, Jeff Fenech, claimed Green knew of Briggs’s problems.

"Danny Green still said he was fit to fight and he still sold the fight. Then he had the audacity to call him a canine," Fenech said.

"Are they gonna be competitive if they haven’t fought for three-and-a-half years?

"Do you honestly believe that Danny Green thought Paul Briggs would be a threat to him at all?"

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/boxing/s...722-10n2e.html

There are certainly varying opinions on the event and what transpires over the next few days should prove to be very interesting.

Online Bookmaker Centrebet has labelled last night's IBO cruiserweight world title showdown as "highly, highly dubious" after a massive betting plunge yesterday on Paul Briggs to be knocked out in the first or second round.
...
Centrebet spokesman Neil Evans this morning said hundreds of bets began pouring in from yesterday morning, shortening the odds for a first-round knockout from $5 to odds-on by the time the fight got under way.

"The outcome of the fight was highly, highly dubious," he said.

"We've never ever in the history of boxing seen so much money go on a specific decision outcome, as in a first- or second-round knockout.

"There was a massive go on first or second-round knockout starting from very early yesterday morning, right through the day, certainly up until early afternoon," he said.

"There were hundreds and hundreds of bets of all different shapes and sizes, and a lot of them from Western Australia. There was one bet of $50,000, which is extraordinary on an option of a first-round knock-out, even on a hot favourite.

"They were both into even money, paying $2 each at around lunch-time almost, such was the amount of money just poured in the gate."

The trend was not just within Centrebet but was mirrored in betting agencies across the country.

Sportsbet.com.au recorded a similar plunge, with odds for Green to knock out Briggs in the first round shortening from $7 early in the day to just $2 after a flurry of bets within a 10-minute time frame yesterday afternoon.

Sportsbet spokesman Haydn Lane said one relatively new punter wanted to wager $10,000 on Green for a first-round knockout, which raised the Bookmaker's suspicions.

"He had only been betting for a short time and normally bets are a lot smaller than that," Mr Lane said.

"At the same time taking a number of fast, smaller bets on Green to win in the first as well.

"We just thought it was a bit odd. As it was, we didn't take the $10,000 bet. We offered him a lesser amount, which he declined.

"Ordinarily there's not much interest in the round betting to be honest, so to get a heap of phone calls in the space of literally 10 minutes was peculiar."

He said Sportsbet had decided to pay all winning bets and refund all losing bets on the fight as a gesture of goodwill.