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.
