Strikeforce has announced Fedor Emelianenko’s first opponent, and it will be none other than hard hitting Cinderella man Brett ‘the Grim’ Rogers. The news was announced at an open training session in New York, and has many people divided on how they feel.
Here’s the deal: so long as Fedor – considered by many to be the best MMA fighter on the planet – isn’t in the UFC, there’ll be a whole segment of fans who won’t be happy with any of the opponents he faces. To them, it’s Brock or bust. Or at least Randy Couture or something! Having Fedor …read more

Last week UFC president Dana White and billionaire exec Lorenzo Fertitta did their best to lock up Fedor Emelianenko, the #1 fighter in mixed martial arts. Shockingly enough, the Russian fighter said ‘nyet’ to them and a deal potentially worth up to 5 million so he could say ‘da’ to Strikeforce, a promotion in distant second place to the UFC. Just to be clear, nyet means no and da means yes. I just wanted to be 100% clear on which offer he turned down, since it’s pretty freaking crazy.
The reason behind Strikeforce’s coup? They agreed to the one sticking point …read more

There’s no way that Fedor Emelianenko is going to sign with the UFC unless his management company M-1 Global is allowed to co-promote the events he fights in. That was the main message given by Fedor’s manager Vadim Finkelstein at their press conference yesterday.
This news crushed all hope that the UFC and M-1 might be able to finally hammer out a deal to bring the world’s best fighter to the Octagon. But like many rounds of negotiation in the past, this one does not look like it would bear fruit. So who’s at fault? Word is the UFC offered Fedor …read more

MMA is currently in a holding pattern as we prepare for a crazy few days of press conferences. On Wednesday: a press conference from Fedor Emelianenko and M-1 Global, Fedor’s managers. On Friday: a press conference with UFC president Dana White where he’s promised to share a ‘laundry list’ of announcements.
For now the biggest question on everyone’s mind is “Will Fedor sign with the UFC?” Since Affliction Entertainment has effectively shut down, Fedor is suddenly a free agent again. The two sides allegedly sat down today in Los Angeles to talk business, and to add a rumor onto another rumor …read more

The last few days in the mixed martial arts world has been absolutely insane. A positive steroid test from Josh Barnett on Wednesday started a chain of events which can only be described as domino-like. In today’s post I’ll try to sum everything that went down for you:

Tito Ortiz returning to the UFC: The great thing about Dana White as UFC president is that he gets so giddy he lets things slip all the time. While tweeting about an appearance on a radio show Friday evening, he added an “Oh yea and welcome back tito :)” to the end. On …read more

Two days ago we passed along info that Josh Barnett had been busted for juicing and his fight against Fedor Emelianenko had been canceled. Now I have more bad news for you: the entire Affliction Trilogy event is dead. And unlike the Kimo news from yesterday, this is for sure … word came out this morning that fighters were being contacted and Affliction president Tom Atencio released a statement an hour ago saying the following:
“Finding an opponent for the No. 1 ranked MMA heavy weight champion in such a short period of time was a huge endeavor and I’m thrilled …read more

The moment Brock Lesnar beat the goo out of Frank Mir at UFC 100, the Lesnar hype train hit full speed. Brock is now ranked at the very top of several legitimate heavyweight ranking lists, beaten out only by one man you might not have heard too much about: Fedor Emelianenko.
Who is Fedor? He’s a portly looking Russian who looks more like a window washer than a cage champion. But for nearly a decade he has fought in Japan, beating out a huge amount of the world’s best heavyweights. His record currently stands at 30-1, with the only loss coming …read more