The hits keep on coming this week for World Series of Fighting Vice President and matchmaker Ali Abdelaziz. First, there were all sorts of conflict of interest accusations stemming from his role as a manager via Dominance MMA, including screenshots of emails purported to show skimming. Now, there’s something else more benign popping up, but it doesn’t exactly paint him in a good light.
Abdelaziz has competed in submission grappling and MMA (he has a 1-2 record with all three fights in the Ring of Fire promotion) in the past, and had hyped himself in those circles as a former Olympic judoka. His biography on Dominance’s website claims that he competed in the Olympics at the age of 17 for Egypt among other claims about his judo accomplishments. When he was one of Dominance client Frankie Edgar’s assistant coaches on The Ultimate Fighter 19, Edgar explained that Abdelaziz wasn’t just his manager, but was also a “judo Olympian.”
There’s just one problem with that: There’s no proof of him being an Olympian. It looks like the other events of this past week as well as this Kevin Iole article where he spoke to Abdelaziz about Rousey motivated some research. Mike Russell, who leaked the incriminating email screenshots earlier this week, tweeted this:
Spoke to a former Egyptian judo champ who says Abdel-Aziz's Olympic claims are false. Egypt sent 2 judokas to ATL in 96. Ali wasn't one.
— Mike Russell (@MIKERUSSELLMMA) November 28, 2015
To one One Middleweight Champion and former Olympic wrestler Ben Askren tweeted:
I'm curious as to why no one fact checked this before https://t.co/HWuL3bMcXR
— Ben Askren (@Benaskren) November 28, 2015
That led to a number of MMA writers as well as insider/Twitter personality/podcast host Front Row Brian looking at Olympic jistory listings, none of which included Abdelaziz. Also, Abdelaziz would have been 17 years old in 1994, which was a Winter Olympics year, when Judo is a Summer Olympics sport. Abdelaziz has yet to address any of these allegations.
