Ben Parrish Dismisses ‘Fluke’ Accusations after Edwards Upset, Talks about ‘Mobster’ Father

Last month, Ben Parrish made history in his Bellator MMA debut, and according to him, it was far from just luck.

Parrish (5-1, 1-0 Bellator) knocked out Christian Edwards with punches in 38 seconds at Bellator 266 on Sept. 18. In scoring his first career knockout, “Big Tuna” also scored Bellator’s biggest betting upset of the year, as he came in as a massive +700 underdog. Shortly after the fight, some fans labeled the Tupelo Jiu-Jitsu Academy representative’s victory as a fluke. The 29-year-old Mississippian dismissed those accusations as unfair and fired back.

“They’ll do anything they can to discredit me, they always have,” said the former Summit Fighting Championships 205-pound titleholder. “It’s just never good enough. I’ve already had several fluke comments and pop up in my DMs, and I just sent back laughing faces because it’s hilarious to me. You think that was luck? I had however long to beat him that I trained to fight this guy three times. If I couldn’t beat him, nobody in the Top 10 was going to beat him.”

In the post-fight press conference, Parrish said that his father was a “mobster.” While he elaborated only partially on what his paternal figure did, Edwards revealed that he had quite a reputation.

“He was [a mobster],” he added. “He was a straight-up gangster, you know what I mean? At the same time, I’m not going to condone anybody making mistakes with their life like, ‘you don’t live the right way, don’t be a bad person.’ Just always try to make the best call that you can, nobody is going to be that mad at you if you mess up and make a wrong call, but don’t let it ruin your life and don’t let it ruin your family’s life. My dad didn’t ruin my family’s life. He made some mistakes but I love him very much, I loved him to the day he left us and I hope I’ll see him again.”

Tudor Leonte started writing about mixed martial arts in 2013 for Italian media outlets. His journey with Sherdog began in 2018 and now he covers One Championship and countless European shows. You can follow him on Twitter @MrTudorLeonte.