Guest baseball25 Posted July 29, 2009 Report Posted July 29, 2009 Fedor Emelianenko will make a grievous mistake if he opts to sign with any mixed martial arts organization other than the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Emelianenko has been so successful in his career as arguably the sport’s best heavyweight ever that he’s developed a cult following that is little more than a group of clapping seals who blindly approve of his every move. Now that Affliction has gone belly up and is no longer promoting fights, the UFC is the only viable place for Emelianenko. Oh, he could sign with one of the Japanese organizations or he could fight for M-1 Global, of which he’s a part owner. ADVERTISEMENT It’s fairly clear that Strikeforce isn’t an option. Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker has built a profitable promotion by spending his money wisely. The investment in Emelianenko wouldn’t make sense for Strikeforce because it doesn’t have the kind of marquee opponents who would generate the kind of money that would allow it to pay Emelianenko’s asking price. There are no legitimate heavyweight contenders in Japan, and if Emelianenko were to sign there he’d only do it for freak show-type fights. Emelianenko’s management also is involved with M-1 and is trying to build that promotion. Part of manager Vadim Finkelchtein’s insistence that the UFC co-promote Emelianenko with M-1 is a desire for M-1 to be able to piggyback on the UFC’s success and establish itself as a top-level promotion. That’s also the reason that Finkelchtein was working with Affliction. M-1 Global officials have shown zero awareness of how to promote and aren’t giving any indication they’re trying to learn. Finkelchtein should drop the silly insistence that the UFC co-promote with M-1 and work a deal that is as good as can be gotten for his fighter. But the UFC also should make certain it does right by Emelianenko. He’s not the attraction that his adoring fans believe he is. The sales of Affliction’s two pay-per-view cards combined weren’t even an eighth of the total of the pay-per-view sales of UFC 100. The pay-per-view card he headlined for PRIDE in Las Vegas in 2006 didn’t reach 40,000 sales. Emelianenko is truly a great fighter, but the average fight fan in America simply doesn’t know who he is and isn’t going to plop down money blindly to find out. The UFC, which plans to put Emelianenko in against heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar in his first fight if it can sign him, will spend an extraordinary amount to promote him and raise his profile once it has his signature on a contract. A fight between Lesnar and Emelianenko could do stratospheric pay-per-view figures again if the UFC is able to convince a largely unaware American public that Emelianenko is a legitimate threat to Lesnar and one of the great fighters of all-time. Doing the right thing by Emelianenko means paying him a competitive wage with its top stars; he doesn’t necessarily have to be the highest paid, because other fighters have accomplished more when both box office and in-cage success are considered. But receiving a contract that is comparable in pay with the UFC’s top stars will be a sign the company is serious. It also should give him a guaranteed end date. Sign him to a four-fight deal and the contract is done when the fourth fight is finished. That means that he could conceivably fight Lesnar, the winner of the Randy Couture-Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira fight that’s scheduled for UFC 102, the winner of the Shane Carwin-Cain Velasquez fight that’s planned for UFC 104 and Frank Mir or another contender who emerges between now and then. Emelianenko’s people have expressed concern about automatically renewing contracts tying him to one company indefinitely. If M-1 concedes on the co-promotion, the UFC could concede on that. Then, Emelianenko would have financial security as well as the opportunity to secure his legacy and prove the clapping seals were right all along. Before we delve into the mailbag and I respond to your questions and comments, I’d like to remind you to follow me on Twitter. You can send me questions for the mailbag there or just choose to talk some boxing and MMA
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