Athletes Banned For Life From Their Sports
If you're a pro athlete looking to avoid a lifetime ban, gambling is going to be a big no-no... and attacking the officials probably isn't the best idea.
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00:00If you're a pro athlete looking to avoid a lifetime ban, gambling is going to be a big
00:04no-no, and attacking the officials probably isn't the best idea.
00:09Sports betting is much more legal in the United States than it used to be, but there are still
00:12certain rules that must be followed, especially if you're a professional athlete. And John
00:16Tate Porter of the Toronto Raptors is one professional athlete who learned that lesson
00:19the hard way. In 2024, an investigation by the NBA determined that Porter bet on basketball
00:24games and that he also provided inside information to gamblers. Additionally, he faked injuries
00:28so that certain bets would pay out. This resulted in a lifetime ban for Porter from
00:32the NBA.
00:33Raptors president Musai Ujiri understandably expressed surprise and disappointment at the
00:37news.
00:38None of us, I don't think anybody saw anything like this coming.
00:44Despite Ujiri's surprise, other observers saw something like this coming from a mile
00:47away. Legal sports gambling is only getting bigger, which means examples like Porter's
00:51could very well be the first of many. As Sean McKeever, a professor of philosophy, explained
00:55to Vox,
00:56"...the corrupting forces are powerful ones, and better stand to make significant sums
01:00that they can extract valuable information and behavior from players and those around
01:03them."
01:04And as Andrew Zimbalist, an expert on the economics of sport, told MarketWatch,
01:07"...it's really likely it's going to happen a lot more. Everybody, even if they are rich,
01:11wants to get richer."
01:12Six weeks before the 1994 Winter Olympics, an assailant attacked figure skater Nancy
01:17Kerrigan by hitting her knee with a metal baton. Amazingly, she recovered in time to
01:20still skate at the Games, along with fellow American Tonya Harding. Kerrigan managed to
01:24win the silver medal, while Harding was a little less successful, finishing in eighth
01:28place.
01:29Failing to medal was only the beginning of Harding's problems, as it was soon discovered
01:32that the attack was planned by her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooey. Harding was also charged, as
01:36prosecutors believed that she was heavily involved in the plot. The two parties ultimately
01:40agreed to a plea bargain in which Harding only admitted to hindering prosecution. Part
01:44of the deal required her to resign her membership in the United States Figure Skating Association,
01:48although this point would become moot since the association ended up banning her for life.
01:52I just want to be able to skate and follow through with my dream.
01:56In the years since the scandal, Harding got married multiple times, had a son, and tried
02:00to stay anonymous, although she found that last part almost impossible. At one point,
02:04she even took up boxing. She's claimed that she has apologized to Kerrigan many times,
02:08although the latter told ABC News in 2018 that she's never received a direct apology.
02:13Sumo wrestler Wakanoho Toshinori was born Soslan Goglov in Russia in 1988. At the age
02:19of 12, he was a promising junior wrestler in his native country. He tried to compete
02:22in the freestyle division of the Olympics, but he struggled to make weight, so his father
02:25encouraged him to try sumo instead. By the time he was 17, Wakanoho was rich and famous
02:30in Japan, but by age 20, he was in disgrace and taking the sport down with him.
02:34In 2008, Toshinori was arrested for drug possession after being caught with marijuana. That might
02:39sound tame by American standards, but it was a serious crime in Japan. He was banned from
02:44sumo for life, the first wrestler to be barred for drug use. All sumo wrestlers were subsequently
02:49drug-tested, which resulted in another two being banned for marijuana use just a month
02:52after Toshinori was. Toshinori then claimed that he'd been paid to throw matches and that
02:56many others were involved in match-fixing as well.
02:59After being thrown out of the Japanese sumo world, he started going by his birth name
03:02again and tried to make it in American football. He played at Weber International University
03:06before transferring to South Florida, and he eventually tried out for the NFL. After
03:10that didn't work out, he returned to sumo, competing outside Japan in bouts organized
03:14by the International Sumo League.
03:16Red cyclist Lance Armstrong was once revered for his athletic accomplishments, but then
03:20he became infamous as the ringleader of one of the biggest doping scandals in sports history.
03:24This forever stained his legacy of winning a record seven Tour de France titles from
03:281999 to 2005, and a bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Considering that he also
03:33beat an advanced case of testicular cancer in the middle of his career, his abilities
03:37seemed practically superhuman. As it turned out, they kind of were.
03:40Throughout his career, Armstrong was constantly dogged by doping accusations, though he always
03:44denied them. It wasn't until 2012 that he was banned for life from cycling events after
03:49several former teammates admitted to doping. He was also stripped of his Tour de France
03:53titles and his Olympic medal. In 2013, he finally confessed to his years of juicing
03:57during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
03:59This is too late.
04:00Armstrong also faced various temporary and permanent bans from many other sports. For
04:04example, he was told that he couldn't participate in a 2012 marathon and a 2013 swim meet because
04:09they were run by organizations that were signatories of the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. This
04:13also kept him from continuing to compete in many of the triathlons that he'd entered
04:17before his ban became official. Some of his bans on entering low-level competitions were
04:21lifted in 2016, although the lifetime ban from cycling remained firmly in place.
04:26You can expect to see some pretty violent kicking during any taekwondo match, but the
04:30problem for Cuban Ăngel Matos was that those moves should have only been directed at his
04:34opponent, and not the referee. At the bronze medal match of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Matos
04:39was winning when he appeared injured. The referee then determined that he'd exceeded
04:42the allowed minute of injury time and disqualified him. Matos responded by running at the ref
04:46and kicking him in the head. He was dragged away by security, and just minutes later it
04:50was announced that he was banned for life from taekwondo.
04:53Matos later admitted to the Havana Times in 2018,
04:55It's something I still regret until this very day because I didn't want my sports career
04:59to end this way."
05:00This was Matos' third Olympics, having previously won gold at the 2000 Sydney Games. While he
05:05took some responsibility for what he did, he also made an accusation of match-fixing.
05:09As he claimed,
05:10They didn't buy me off that day so that I would lose the fight. My trainer and I were
05:13both offered money and we refused. That's why I still say that they bought the referee
05:17off, because ever since the match began, he bothered me.
05:20Joseph Jefferson Jackson, better known by the nickname Shoeless Joe, escaped poverty
05:24growing up in South Carolina to become a baseball phenom. He was playing for local teams by
05:28the time he was a teenager, and then he was signed to the big leagues by the time he was
05:3121. In 1915, he started his stint with the Chicago White Sox. They won the World Series
05:36in 1917 and then made it to the championship again two years later. But then Jackson and
05:40some of his teammates got themselves mixed up in the Black Sox scandal, which was famously
05:44dramatized in the 1988 film Eight Men Out.
05:47Some of the White Sox players were accused of throwing the series to the Cincinnati Reds
05:50after being paid by gamblers. Several admitted that they were guilty, but Jackson didn't,
05:55and his teammates swore they didn't tell him what they were doing. Despite maintaining
05:58his innocence, Jackson was banned from baseball for life. Afterwards, he went on to try to
06:02live anonymously while running a dry-cleaning business. In 1942, he told the Sporting News,
06:06Regardless of what anybody says, I was innocent of any wrongdoing. If I had been out there
06:10booting balls and looking foolish at bat against the Reds, there might have been some grounds
06:14for suspicion. I think my record in the 1919 World Series will stand up against that of
06:18any other man in that series, or any other World Series in all history.
06:21He was the best. Run, hit, throw. He was the best.
06:28Bulgarian tennis player Aleksandrina Nedenova is hardly a well-known name, even among the
06:33sport's most hardcore fans. Her career-high WTA singles ranking was just .218, which she
06:38achieved in 2019. And we'll never know if she could have ever achieved a higher place
06:42than that, because that was also the year that she was banned for life for match-fixing.
06:46Nedenova wasn't the only one involved in the scandal. In fact, she was just one cog in
06:50the biggest match-fixing ring that tennis had ever seen. It was organized by a man named
06:53Gregor Sargason, and it involved at least 180 players from 35 countries. Players would
06:59receive texts before their matches instructing them how well or how poorly to perform. The
07:03same information would also be sent to the gamblers involved in the ring, thereby allowing
07:06them to make bets they had no chance of losing.
07:09A 2020 investigation determined that Nedenova was involved in at least 12 match-fixing incidents
07:13over a four-year period. Her temporary ban from any official tennis competition was made
07:17permanent, and she was also fined $150,000.
07:21After the Black Sox scandal, Major League Baseball made it an official rule that its
07:25players could not bet on baseball games, especially ones that they themselves were playing in.
07:29So when it was revealed that record-breaking hitter Pete Rose was doing exactly that while
07:32both playing and managing the Cincinnati Reds in the mid-1980s, there was no way that he
07:37could avoid the prescribed punishment of a lifetime ban, the event was so notorious it
07:41became known as the Banning of Pete Rose. The official document involved was even auctioned
07:45off at Christie's in 2021, where it went for $150,000.
07:49To save face, Rose agreed to the ban as long as the MLB didn't state that they had officially
07:53determined he bet on baseball, just other sports. Despite his on-field accomplishments,
07:57Rose remains ineligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, although he has
08:01tried numerous times to be reinstated.
08:03Now that sports gambling rules have been relaxed across much of the United States, there have
08:06been renewed discussions on relaxing the ban. However, in 2023, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred
08:12made it clear that the ban was there to stay.
08:14Do you look at it now with a little bit ofâŠ
08:17Nah, I stay away from that because I don't do DraftKings.
08:22In 1999, the International Association of Athletics Federations named Dutch sprinter
08:26Fouke Delema the female athlete of the century. At the 1948 London Summer Olympics, she won
08:31four medals, but just two years later, her career was over, as the Dutch governing body
08:35conducted a physical examination that resulted in Delema being banned for life. The exact
08:39reason is unclear, as no details of the exam have ever been released.
08:43One speculation is that Delema was banned because she refused to submit to a gynecological
08:47exam. Delema was assigned female at birth, raised as a girl, and presented as a woman
08:51her whole life. However, a genetic test of DNA from her clothing after she died painted
08:56a more complicated picture by indicating that she was an intersex person. But according
08:59to Dr. Kamlesh Madan, a geneticist at Leiden University, she was definitely a woman and
09:04she should never have been expelled by the athletics union.
09:08The honor â or dishonor â of being the only NHL player ever banned for life goes
09:12to Billy Cattu. He started playing in the league from its inception in 1917 as captain
09:16of the Montreal Canadiens. He was also a notable hothead, even by the standards of a sport
09:20known for its brawls. Before the 1926-27 season, Cattu was traded to the Boston Bruins, who
09:26ended up making it to the Stanley Cup final that year.
09:28After Game 4, Cattu, along with the Bruins' manager and several other players, attacked
09:32one of the referees in a hallway. When another referee tried to intervene, Cattu attacked
09:36him too, which resulted in his lifetime ban. However, the ban was only enforced for two
09:41Cattu was eventually allowed to play and coach in the minor leagues and then given permission
09:44to return to the NHL, although he never played in another game.