Saturday, September 6, 2008

The Manager of Planet Earth's Greatest Fighter Comments on Couture's New UFC Deal


WAMMA Heavyweight Champion and former Pride Champion Fedor Emelianenko is without doubt the baddest human being alive. For the last year Fedor and UFC Heavyweight king Randy Couture have been trying to put together a fight to cement their legacies. Unfortunately, UFC President Dana White and his legal team have blocked the fight and succeeded in holding Randy Couture in legal limbo.
After a year of court battles and stagnation, Randy Couture gave in and agreed to new terms with the UFC. Now Couture is signed on to fight Brock Lesnar and Dana White, the child that he can sometimes be, is back to down talking the undisputed heavyweight king Fedor Emelianenko. Fedor's unwillingness to sign an exclusive contract with the UFC has kept the legendary Russian out of the Octagon and permanently on the mind of the foul mouthed UFC president. Now Fedor's manager reacts to the situation.

"M-1 Global president Vadim Finkelstein comments on the signing of the contract between UFC and Couture and reflects upon Dana White’s words about Affliction and Fedor Emelianenko.
I believe Randy knows what he’s doing. He’s an awesome athlete, one of the world’s best. I know he got tired of these endless litigation and uncertainty that arose after his resignation. UFC had Randy in the contractual trap so he had to choose an easier solution to the problem.
As for his potential bout with Fedor – all the MMA fans are eager to see this happen. The statements mister White still makes about Fedor alert me. It looks as if White is reluctant to let the best fighter in the world fight the UFC symbol. I’m afraid we’ll stumble upon the bricks of the UFC monopoly and the negotiations will lead nowhere. This fight the fans await might never materialize.
Randy has proved long time ago to be America’s number 1, he’s got nothing more to prove but this contract brings him back to the position where he has again to fight younger athletes in order to earn the right he’s already earned to face the best. Randy is a mature fighter and putting him to the test now and again seems not quite reasonable to me. Everyone wants to see Fedor vs. Randy. Apparently Dana plans to destroy Randy by signing him to three bouts. White believes that Couture won’t pass through the hard trial without loss so that eventually the champion will stay with the UFC. Randy is 45 and he defeated a lot of great adversaries but now he is set to face some upstart athlete who Dana intends to turn into the national star if he pulls the victory against the long-time hero. Fight is fight and anything can happen. All this reminds me of the Pride situation when the organization was bought out with the sole goal of completely destroying it.
That’s why it looks like there will be no Randy-Fedor fight ever although we are eager to make it happen, both fighters are eager to get it on.
Fedor is the number one fighter in the world and we always try to give him the bouts against the best opponents while all the statements of White doubting Fedor’s status are caused by the awareness of the fact that the power of the UFC in the world of MMA is not overwhelming. They can’t own every fighter they covet. UFC is very well-known and possesses lion’s share in MMA industry because of its history and popularity accumulated during the years that the organization exists.
In our turn we negotiate a long term collaboration with Affliction. We build a global project helping fighters from all over the world gain fame. That’s why we launched international M-1 Challenge. We want to organize huge events in order to promote MMA and make it popular in the whole world and not in the context of one particular country. We work hard on achieving the goals we set and time will tell whose path was right."
-credit M1 Mixfight

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