Today, during the monthly Nevada Athletic Commission meeting, one of the items on the agenda was the number of fights on World Series of Fighting’s December 18th card. WSOF wants 20 bouts, while the NSAC tries to cap cards off at 18. The audio of the whole motion is embedded above. Executive Director Bob Bennett moved to keep it at 18 due to “administrative and some operational concerns” he has with WSOF…and that he has a meeting with the WSOF Vice President (Ali Abdelaziz) today about those issues. The commissioners voted to dismiss WSOF’s motion, and that was that.
This comes on the heels of a week full of bad press for WSOF, primarily centering on Abdelaziz’s role with the company as Vice President and matchmaker. The allegations of him having a conflict of interest (because he also serves as a manager in violation of Nevada Athletic Commission rules) got more attention, as did a debunking of his self-proclaimed past as an Olympic judoka. The latter is not necessarily of concern to the NAC, but it doesn’t reflect well. The website of his management company, Dominance MMA, has scrubbed most mentions of his name.
