M-1 Light heavyweight champion and former The Ultimate Fighter season 8 finalist Vinny Magalhaes (9-5) has sold his M-1 Light heavyweight belt on EBay. Magalhaes has been on the outs with the Russian based M-1 promotion due to lack of fights being booked and a dispute with the M-1 front office.
Magalhaes captured the M-1 Light Heavyweight Championship against Viktor Nemkov at M-1 Challenge 25. In his next title defense, Magalhaes has claimed that M-1 Director of Operations Evgeni Kogan was seen publicly coaching his opponent and cheering against the promotion’s champion.
Magalhaes has made it clear that he wants out of his M-1 contract, but as a champion, M-1 has a championship clause which would enable them to match any offer made by another promotion. This has forced Magalhaes to wait out the period of the champion clause and not seek employment with any other organization.
Magalhaes announced he had placed the belt on EBay and then tweeted M-1 director Evengeni Kogan:
@Evgenikogan Hey buddy, you wanted your belt back? #placeyourbid it’s on @ebay :)
Shortly after the auction went live the initial starting bid of $0.99 jumped upwards to $20,000 in only a few hours. The bidding price continued to rise and after Magalhaes looked into some of the bidders, he realized that they were legit. It is being reported that a sports memorabilia dealer raised the price to $90,000 and Magalhaes closed the auction out with that winning bid. Magalhaes took to twitter to announce the sale :
SOLD!!! @ebay #winning $100k http://pic.twitter.com/nEGnAqyt
Magalhaes is a former ADCC gold medalist and finalist of the Ultimate Fighter season 8. In the finale he lost by TKO to Ryan Bader. After another UFC loss against Eliot Marshal at UFC 97 he was cut from the organization. Magalhaes has gone on to win seven of his last eight fights. Five of those fights came in M-1 global and include his light heavyweight championship win and defense.
UPDATE: At time of publishing, Magalhaes had released another tweet that seems to indicate that the high price bidding may have not been legitimate.
So I contacted
@ebay, and they informed that the last real bidder was the one who wanted to pay $5.00 . I knew that belt wasn’t worth s—!