Fedor's Strikeforce deal

[Kiwon]

Well, no "Lesnar versus Emelianenko" for the foreseeable future. :(

It always seems to work out like this. Fans miss out the main event everyone wants to see because corporate leaders can't get their acts together. Nobody likes a monopoly but UFC's THE MMA organization right now and probably will remain that way.

Major League Baseball has its minor league. The PGA has the Nationwide Tour. Same thing with NASCAR.

Let UFC be the major league and all the others places for the up-and-coming fighters to prove themselves.

MMA is big and will explode in the future. The Asian market (India, China, even Russia) dwarfs the audiences currently watching MMA right now.

A televised marquee matchup between a skilled European/Asian champion and a love-to-hate North American brawling brute would be titanic. A series of matches would firmly establish MMA (and UFC) globally.

But......Fedor's Strikeforce deal probably delays the rapid global spread of the sport despite the television contracts. The sport needs quality fights, not glitzy street brawlers. Who's Fedor going to fight, unknowns and has-beens? It's a real shame, truly a missed opportunity. UFC's $30 million for six fights was a fair offer to Fedor. I'm sorry he and M-1 Global didn't take it.

There is plenty of money to be made by everybody.....if somebody would swallow his pride just a little bit.

And then if Lesnar versus Emelianenko ever happens, Fedor will be past his prime and fans will be left with a lot of "what ifs." (sigh)

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Copied this from someone else about Fedor:

1. He has held 5 MMA championships, and never lost them.
2. Fedor holds the best win streak in all mma, 24
3. Fedor has never been knocked down by any type of strike.
4. Most recent win over Tim Sylvia a top 5 HW lasted 36 seconds.
5. Fedor has a finishing percentage of 75%
6. No fighter has ever stopped Fedor in a fight. But 1 doctor has.
7. Has defeated 5 different HW champions or X champions.
8. Fedor has 70 total take downs in mma, 41 of which upper body take downs.
9. Fedor has 12 wins in under 2 minutes
10. And 5 wins under 1 minute.

[Brando19]

That sucks. Oh well....Fedor's lucky he can't fight Lesnar...he'd get his ass handed to him.

[Deputy Nutz]

I follow MMA, I am on a few MMA message boards, and I can't stand Fedor nuthuggers. I like Fedor enough as a fighter and recognize him as the top heavyweight, and his last two fights were against two former UFC champions which he demolished in the first round.

Fedor fell in bed with M-1, or better said the russian mob. They wanted co-promotion rights, and the UFC would not bow to this. It was a ridiculous request to begin with. The UFC has built this sport, at least in Western Culture. I understand that Pride Fighting was huge, and I liked to watch Pride, but they were eventually bought out by UFC.

Fedor can go ahead and sign with Strikeforce, but he hasn't been relavant for almost 3 years now.

Lesnar would not whoop Fedor's ass. Lesnar would be lucky to leave the first round with his elbow still intact.

I still want to see Fedor verse Couture, but I fear Couture has gotten too old. We will see when he steps into the ring against Big Nog in a month.

[Kiwon]

Fedor fell in bed with M-1, or better said the russian mob.

That's very likely and it probably wasn't his fault either.

You wrote the one idea that I wanted to include above but could not find a way to express it. There is no doubt that people behind the scenes control the show and Fedor is basically ordered what to do.

They are killing journalists, imprisoning businessmen, etc, in Russia and if Fedor wants to make sure that his family is safe he probably has to do as he's told.

I got that angle.

I was complaining as a fan and thinking that it would be nice for a worldwide burgeoning sport to basically get started off on the right foot. Worldwide, MMA, will probably be second only to soccer one day. It would be nice to have one gold-plated league/organization rather than multiple champions as is the case in boxing.

But it seems that nothing ever works out perfectly for fans of any sport. So after Dana White's boasting that Fedor would be in the UFC, I was naive enough to believe that maybe things would be different this time.

[Deputy Nutz]

White knew that M-1 wanted a co-promotion deal. They want to get rich, they could care less about Fedor's 30 million, 6 fight deal.

I like Strikeforce, it was a smart move for them, hopefully it doesn't backfire for them