Ted Forrest, Mike Matusow in Twitter Spat Over Weight Loss Prop Bet
Those of you who watched the World Series of Poker on ESPN back in 2010 might remember a seemingly torturous prop bet that was featured on the telecast. The bet was between Ted Forrest, who is known as prop bet royalty, and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow. As the two told the brief tale in separate interviews, while chatting at the Commerce Casino one day, Forrest bet Matusow $2 million that he (Forrest) could get his weight down to 139 pounds by July 15th, a few months away. On July 15th, Forrest weighed in at 138 pounds.
He detailed more of the bet’s origins to ESPN.com that year:
Well, a couple of years ago, Mike was pretty portly. He weighed about 250 pounds, and I bet him $100,000 he couldn’t get down to 181 pounds in a year. He did it and beat me for $100,000. We were at the Commerce [Casino] a few months ago, we’d just had dinner, and I felt full and fat. I weighed about 188 in clothes. I bet him I’d weigh under 140, and he was like, “No, it’s impossible,” so he laid me 20:1 that I couldn’t do it by July 15 and another $1 million against $100,000 that I couldn’t do it by Sept. 24.
They laid out the terms, namely that Forrest couldn’t use drugs to lose the weight or, heaven forbid, chop off part of his body in desperation. And Forrest did it. Once the bet was over, Matusow agreed to pay Forrest $5,000 a month for 18 years to pay in full (though that would not be in full; in full would be almost twice as long).
$2 million is certainly a lot of money, but high stakes poker players are known for tossing around cash and Matusow was a successful player, so he was good for it, right? Apparently not.
Over the past week, Ted Forrest has been obliterating Matusow on Twitter, accusing him of welching on the bet. It started last Tuesday when Forrest tweeted, “@CardPlayerMedia Correcting the numbers: @themouthmatusow has payed [sic] me $70.500 of the 1.8million he owes me for the weight loss bet #4years”
There wasn’t much of a response to that until the beginning of this week when Matusow’s brother, Scott, started getting into it with Forrest. He wasn’t so much saying Forrest didn’t win the bet, but more getting under his skin by saying he didn’t submit to a drug test and then questioning whether or not the man behind the Twitter account was really Forrest. It was all just dumb.
Ted Forrest Before and After Prop Bet
Image Courtesy: @ForrestTed
But that conversation set off a string of tweets and retweets that just elevated the hilarity. On Tuesday, Forrest sent out the following message: “I weigh 180 but I’m light about 1.7 million. Please I am asking you Mike make some type of good faith effort to do the right thing.”
Followed by, “What a moron I must be when you tell me you made your weight I guess you won the bet. I paid you 100k. I just assumed when you lose a bet you pay!”
More gold: “I hope you get back on your feet Mike. Karma is a BITCH.”
“You don’t look healthy Mike. Get healthy. Win. Pay your debts.”
After those tweets, Forrest went on a spree, retweeting posts by Matusow and others from last year which showed Matusow traveling to various locales to play and tweets congratulating him on various scores, including a World Series of Poker bracelet win. All of these were likely in an effort to show that Matusow did have the ability to pay Forrest, at least partially.
“In 2010 Mike was not broke. And he has won more than 1.8 million dollars in the last 4 years,” Forrest wrote.
Matusow himself finally chimed in, posting in several tweets combined (the tweets have since been deleted – credit to F5Poker.com for saving them for posterity):
I just got back on twitter to see all this Ted Forrest bullshit, in defense of myself I must tell the real truth. 4 yrs ago me and Ted made a bet and were very drunk when we made it I then told him I don’t want the bet cause I can’t afford to lose. He then said sorry you owe me 500k to cancel bet,I laughed at him and said fine don’t cancel the bet but I’m not changing my life style. And you all know full tilt stole mine and everyone’s money and I’ve struggled to survive since…
Finally, Matusow essentially told Forrest to “GTFO,” writing, “Sorry ted if you think your getting anymore money sue me I got 4 people who were there when bet was made and I made it clear I wasn’t changing my lifestyle for you or any bet when it was made.”
Fortunately, it looks like things have calmed down a little. Today, Forrest wrote that he and Matusow are trying to “work out a settlement.” He added that it appears that Matusow has been suffering through some physical problems and might need surgery. He wished Matusow well while at the same time not letting forget about his debt:
“People ruin their health to try to get rich. And then they spend all there [sic] money trying to regain their health. I hope you regain your health Mike. Maybe then I can regain my wealth:) all kidding aside get well soon. So you can start making some good faith payments. Even if they are small ones….I think that will make us not feel better about it.”
Ah, the internet and poker. That was fun, wasn’t it?
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