“The promoters kind of hinted to me, and they gave me the money to stand and trade with him. They didn’t want me to take him down, let’s just put it that way,” Petruzelli stated on the “Monters in the Morning Show” on 104.1 FM in Orlando, Florida.

Petruzelli’s statement sent shockwaves throughout the MMA community, and EliteXC was quick to dispel Petruzelli’s interpretation of what was told to him prior to his fight with the company’s poster boy.

“Absolutely not,” Shaw told MMAWeekly.com about the allegations. “Whether that was something Seth was taken out of context or Seth was trying to say something different, I don’t know. What I can tell you, I was in the locker room with Seth with the contract; that did not happen.

“Why in a million years would we ask Seth to not take Kimbo down? That’s crazy. That’s all Kimbo’s been working on is the ground game. Ken Shamrock, 84 percent of his wins are submission and through the ground, so Kimbo was ready for the ground. If anybody knows Seth Petruzelli, he’s a K-1 fighter, I wouldn’t want him standing. So to say ‘don’t take him down,’ that’s ridiculous.”

There are plenty of reasons to believe that Pertuzelli’s interpretation of what transpired in his locker room prior to his fight with Kimbo are correct:

First of all, Kimbo is clearly EliteXC’s biggest draw, and everyone knows that since day one, they have gone out of their way to protect their investment. Kimbo’s three previous opponents had either not faced any elite MMA competition prior to fighting him, or were past the prime of their careers, including Kimbo’s original opponent for the night Ken Shamrock.

Secondly, EliteXC has lost nearly $60 Million since their inception just two years ago, and the CBS network deal is by far their best asset. EliteXC is the only MMA promotion to have a deal with a major television network, including the industry leading UFC. However, their second CBS promotion in July was a ratings disaster, and if they would have followed that up with a second consecutive one, that could have signaled the beginning of the end for EliteXC’s partnership with CBS.