Sandbagging

Sandbagging is a term most commonly used when a competitor or team puts the odds so much in their favor that they are basically guaranteed a win.

How its done at grappling tournaments:

A collegiate wrestler enters the beginner division of a jiu-jitsu tournament because he's only trained BJJ for six months.

A school that makes their students wait five years to get a blue belt so all of their white belts clean house, and their five year blue belts smoke the other two year blue belts.

A 20 year judo guy enters the beginner division of a BJJ tourney.

The promoter of the tournament hires refs favoring his competitors.

The promoter changes the rules half way through the tournament.

I have personally witnessed all of the above.

How it's done in MMA:

The promoter lies to one fighter about the other fighters skills, for example, "Yeah, this guy will want to stand and bang with you." Later you find out he's a Division I wrestler, and a close friend of the promoter.

A lot of the time teams work out deals with the promoter to sell a lot of tickets to get set up with easy fights, to pad their record.

I have personally seen this happen more times than I care to remember. I also know a bunch of ticket sellers who have had worked fights. I would rather lose a real fight than win a fake fight.

When looking for a school, if you notice that all of their fighters always win, but they don't have any national organization champions, they are sandbagging.

It is in my opinion that a fighter take tough fights to challenge himself and to figure out where the holes in his game are, otherwise when he makes it to the big shows, he will choke.