Friday night's MMA bout in Houston between Kimbo Slice and relative unknown Dhafir "Dada 5000" Harris has attracted an unusual level of betting action on the underdog, causing the odds to shift dramatically and forcing multiple sportsbooks to take the fight off the board.
Slice opened as a -360 favorite before a flurry of action, including several large wagers, poured in on the underdog Harris, driving the price down to Slice -165 as of Friday morning.
"We took seven bets in the first two hours we had it up; all of them were to win four figures on the underdog," said Jason Simbal, vice president of race and sports at Las Vegas sportsbook operator CG Technology. "It was moving like crazy. We had to take it down."
CG Technology reposted the odds on the fight Thursday night and continued to take action on Harris. In fact, the book didn't take a single bet on Slice until the price on the favorite shrunk all the way to -160.
Multiple offshore books also took the fight, which is part of the Bellator 149 card, off the board Thursday.
As of Friday morning at CG Technology, more money had been bet on the Slice-Harris fight than any other event on the card, except for two NBA games -- the Miami Heat at Atlanta Hawks and Toronto Raptors at Chicago Bulls.
The Westgate SuperBook reported taking approximately 20 limit wagers on Harris on Thursday afternoon and even doubled its normal limits on a Bellator fight from $500 to $1,000.
"We don't usually write this type of money on Bellator," Superbook assistant manager Randy Blum told ESPN.
Slice and Harris grew up in the same poverty-stricken Miami suburb and attended the same high school. The two fighters have taken verbal jabs at each other leading up to the fight.
ESPN writer Brett Okamoto contributed to this article.
