The Christian Darrow Mystery Continues With Bobby Campbell Debacle

By Joe Pietaro
- Tweet
- Pin It
Updated: August 30, 2010

For the underground mixed martial arts community that would at least like a little closure, they received anything but that with the nonsense that occurred on August 13. That was the date when some questions should have been answered, but instead a few more reared their ugly heads.

Christian Darrow, the self-proclaimed undefeated prison fighter, was scheduled to go up against Bobby Campbell – who was going to be a trainer at Darrow’s Attica MMA gym – in a kick boxing bout on a sanctioned card in Deer Park, New York. This match-to-be was hyped to shit with multiple YouTube videos, some that were quite entertaining. One was a press conference that Darrow arrived fashionably late to because, in his own words, “I got hammered drunk and lost my Camaro at like one o’clock in the morning. I think I woke up at like 5:08 on someone’s kitchen floor.”

Darrow, 48, has lost approximately 100 pounds over the last year and a half since getting out of jail after serving nearly 19 years for armed bank robbery and a major reason has been drug use, mainly cocaine. At the conference, he claimed to have been off cocaine for 22 days and that he was “getting in shape by not doing what I do.”

Bringing up his last fight, Darrow mentioned that before getting in the ring against James Funaro, that he had “OD’d on Sunday, had been getting high Monday to Wednesday, got high in the bathroom before I got in the ring” and that his ankle was broken in seven places (as well as suffering a broken rib) from the first round knockout he suffered a few months back.

“Everyone knows that I was embarrassed over that,” Darrow added. Speaking of the upcoming fight, Darrow said, “I’ll get in there if I’m dying to fight.”

Fast forward a few weeks and Darrow did show up, but with a doctor’s note in hand instead of ring gear. “I was not medically cleared to fight Bobby Campbell because of an eye injury,” Darrow stated on what has become the most infamous voice mail greeting on the Internet. “Everybody’s saying it’s fake or I claimed it, but I could give two fucks. I’m not going blind to fight Bobby Campbell.”

Darrow went on to say that he was carrying the promotion and that as soon as he is medically cleared, he wanted to fight. “Don’t run away like you did in the parking lot,” he added.

So the mystery continues – if you want it to. We here at MuscleSport Mag have no problem admitting that we became involved with Darrow back in January because of the hype surrounding him on the Internet. Shit, we were hoping to be jumping on the bandwagon of the north east version of Kimbo Slice. Not taking a shot with this guy would have been bad business, so we gave it a go.

After the UCL no-show, it became apparent that Darrow had more problems than protecting his reputation. The guy apparently had a substance abuse problem and looked every bit the part. The last time that we had contact with him was in early March just after the Funaro loss.

But curiousity got the better of us and we did a little Google search over the summer. Sure enough, Darrow was once again up there with the pre-fight videos with Campbell. We decided to sit this one out and watch from afar, and after what happened we are glad that we made that decision.

Don’t bet that this will be the last anyone hears from Darrow. Just not sure yet if this will be a place for the news – good or bad.