With MMA’s bigger money era here, the media now walks a fine line. Run with a report from one source and you can look like a jackass. It happens all the time to guys like Chris Mortensen and Ric Bucher. Mort was in too tight with the Falcons and let the organization and the NFL steer him in the wrong direction on early Michael Vick stories. Bucher has been the master of misinformation on Laker contract situations because he’s boys with Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom. The "Fedor Emelianenko to UFC" reports this week have been all over the map.

The L.A. Times’ Lance Pugmire said the deal was done on Tuesday. That certainly wasn’t the case. On Wednesday, KHTK’s Carmichael Dave reported that Fedor received a huge offer from the UFC of six fights and $30 million. Fedor’s management M-1, said the offer was nowhere near that number and a female blogger called out Dave saying the report was ludicrous.

Dave popped on ESPNRadio1100 to defend himself:

"As big as this is, there’s going to be other stuff down the road and I’m not going to go out and risk any credibility by getting the short term fix of Internet people sending me emails saying great job."

Dave says the MMA media is no different than any of major sport:

"Are we pawns in this game? Of course. Even if the information is 100-percent right all the time it still doesn’t mean we’re not being used. It’s politics of sport. Of course you can be a pawn."

It sounds like the only real discrepancy in Dave’s report was the omission of the terminology "max deal" on the six fight-$30 million offer.

Just weeks after his second-round loss to Brock Lesnar at UFC 100, Frank Mir thinks that he didn’t go about things the right way.

"I think I should respected the wrestling a little bit more. I really was under the impression that we would fight on our feet a little bit better. I thought he would avoid the ground with me and want to knock me out."

"The times we were on our feet, I was more successful, but the bad news was that we were only on our feet for about 15 seconds in the round and a half that we fought. I got pretty much owned on the ground. I need to work more wrestling, and I also need to put on a little bit more size. I think 245 was a good weight as far as maybe everybody else in the heavyweight division, but fighting Brock, there was too much of a size difference, due to the fact that he had great technique also."

"It wasn’t just because of his size that he was able to nullify my technique, but he used his size. He knew how to position his hips, and block my hips, and hold my arm. He did things that I didn’t really expect because of his reach. I think I went in with too much of a gameplan, and I wanted it to go one way, and I tried to force it that way."

But Mir isn’t looking back at the loss to Lesnar any more. Instead, he is looking forward to working his other job, cageside announcer for the WEC. In particular, he is excited to see, in Mir’s opinion, the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world, Miguel Torres. 

"I don’t think there is anyone in the world who can beat Miguel Torres at a guts and blood battle because he is so technical, but at the same time, he is so vicious. He loves those fights where he’s bleeding, you’re bleeding, you’re trying to kill each other,  you’re trying to break his ankle, he’ll break your ankle. He’s such a fierce fighting spirit that if you call that out at him, you’re awakening the sleeping giant. It’s almost better not to put him in a war."

Biased for Torres?

After the last Torres fight, a five-round decision over Takeya Mizugaki, Mir was criticized for favoring his friend, Torres, while commentating on the fight. Mir acknowledges the criticism, but he doesn’t believe it’s warranted. To Mir, the fight was always Torres’ to lose.

"All of the judges had Miguel winning going into the fifth round. Miguel did not do what a lot of other champions do, which is go into a late round and sit on a lead. He could have bloodied his face up with a few jabs, and avoided the inside game, and would have won the round and won the fight with no risk to his title. But what he did was come forward. He came forward to viciously destroy Mizugaki in a way that I don’t see a lot of other champions doing."

Torres-Bowles isn’t the only fight Mir is excited about for WEC 42. He is also looking forward to the bout that will likely set up the next challenge for the bantamweight belt.

"I’m excited about Dominick Cruz and Joseph Benavidez, because the winner will be fighting for the title. Joseph Benavidez has such an unorthodox fighting style. I think sometimes he gets the wrong impression, it’s not that I’m dissing his style, it’s just that technically, I would tell people, ‘No, you don’t throw a punch of your back foot,’ he does it over and over again, but to great success. I think some people made the same statements about Lyoto Machida, myself included. He’s doing things that shouldn’t work, and he’s the undefeated light heavyweight champion"

"Dominick Cruz, I love his style. His standup is a little more classical, as far as phenomenal angles, and good foot work, and phenomenal pace. Both these guys are some of the hardest workers in the bantamweight class, so I’m really excited about that fight."

There is actually not a fight on the entire WEC card that Mir isn’t excited about. He rattled through the entire card, knowing the intricacies of each fighter in the WEC. Even on the the undercard, he said he can’t wait to see Marcus Hicks take on Shane Roller in what he called "the battle of the guillotines." Mir’s enthusiasm, technical knowledge and the fact that he knows the fighters well make him one of the more interesting MMA announcers around. We’ll see on Sunday, August 9 at 9 p.m. ET on Versus if he can keep the bias in check. 

Fedor Emelianenko
said on Wednesday that he does not intend to sign a contract with the UFC unless it agrees to promote fights
jointly with Emelianenko’s promoter, M-1 Global. Since then, several Web sites have reported that Emelianenko had turned down a six-fight contract with the UFC worth $30 million.

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Filed under: Affliction, UFC, WEC, Strikeforce, FanHouse Exclusive

On this week’s edition of The MMA Hour, MDS, Mike Chiappetta and I discuss the aftermath of Affliction canceling “Trilogy” and joining forces with the UFC. Where does Fedor Emelianenko go from here? How does this affect Strikeforce? What will be Afflction Entertainment’s legacy? Those questions and more were answered.

Plus, we were joined by WEC bantamweight contender, Joseph Benavidez, to talk about his upcoming fight against Dominick Cruz on August 9. The winner of that bout looks to be the No.1 contender in the WEC’s 135-pound division. Check out the show below.

The MMA Hour: Affliction Fallout and Joseph Benavidez Interview originally appeared on MMA FanHouse on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: MMA Media Watch, UFC

Prior to 2007, hardly anyone following mixed martial arts knew much about Vadim Finkelchtein, but by that time, he had already been managing Fedor Emelianenko for almost four years. Today, Finkelchtein finds himself in the center of the biggest free agency story in MMA history, with major news outlets like The Los Angeles Times tracking its progress.

So why all the drama surrounding the saga? Perhaps central to the problem the UFC is facing is that Finkelchtein acts as both Emelianenko’s manager and promoter. That Finkelchtein has a financial interest in Emelianenko is no secret, but the fact that his roles essentially amount to a conflict of interest is something that is scarcely mentioned.

Finkelchtein is one of the owners of M-1 Global, an MMA organization that has done shows in multiple countries but is not well known in the United States. In theory, Emelianenko is the biggest fighter who competes under the M-1 banner, even though he’s never fought exclusively under it. But to Finkelchtein and M-1, that association means something. Overseas, where Emelianenko is a bigger star than he is here, Finkelchtein and M-1 can use the name and likeness of the heavyweight star to continue building their brand. Tying him to a UFC contract would make growth a lot more difficult. After all, almost no one would identify the M-1 brand ahead of the UFC’s.

So as Emelianenko’s manager, every offer that Finkelchtein receives must be weighed against the future health of M-1. Simply put, that is a conflict of interest; an unbiased manager would be thinking only in terms of his client. Legally speaking, he is doing nothing wrong, as MMA does not have the same rules in place as boxing, which saw the Muhammad Ali Act do away with manager/promoters years ago. Finkelchtein is simply operating within the framework of a flawed system.

And to be fair, Finkelchtein is far from the only manager who also doubles as a fight promoter. Monte Cox, Joe Cavallaro, Mark Pavelich and others are also multi-taskers, but Finkelchtein has simply taken the stakes higher than anyone else. The success of those men show that manager/promoters can have satisfied clients, and perhaps Emelianenko is perfectly content with Finkelchtein and his representation. But Finkelchtein’s continued insistence on co-promotion as an essential element of a deal has to make one wonder just how much of the deal is about Fedor and how much is about the business interests of M-1.

While it should be noted that Emelianenko also has a piece of the M-1 pie, and that he too would also be weighing his options against M-1′s existence, he deserves the counsel of an impartial opinion in regards to his own financial future. This is not to say that Emelianenko is unable to make his own decisions, only that he deserves a sounding board who is truly working for him rather than for multiple causes. It’s worth noting, after all, that in Fedor conversations, Finkelchtein refers to “we” rather than “he.” The UFC is trying to sign one man, not a team.

To flip the coin, many believe the UFC also has its own conflicts of interest, acting as promoter, matchmaker, making its own rankings, etc. And of course, many people think their contracts are restrictive (Randy Couture for a time was ready to challenge it legally). Still, if Fedor doesn’t end up signing with the UFC, many will be left to wonder if different representation would have ended with a different result. He certainly doesn’t owe the world anything, and if he decides to finish out his career fighting in a 200-seat gym in his hometown of Stary Oskol rather than under the bright lights of Dana White‘s octagon, that’s his right. And hopefully whatever he decides for his future is truly on his own terms.

We know UFC’s first priority is the organization itself, ahead of its relationship with any one fighter. At least that is transparent. But what about Finkelchtein. Is he a manager first and a promoter second? Is he putting his client’s concerns ahead of his own? We don’t know the answer, and that’s exactly the problem.

Manager/Promoter Conflict Put Into Spotlight in Fedor Emelianenko Deal originally appeared on MMA FanHouse on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:29:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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