The World Alliance Mixed Martial Arts (WAMMA) champion and current #1 heavyweight in the world, Fedor Emelianenko says he would like to fight Brock Lesnar and he no longer wishes to pursue a fight with MMA legend Randy Couture. Randy Couture recently came back after a year long layoff in an unsuccessful title defense against new comer Brock Lesnar.
Much of Couture’s absence was due to the fighter being tied up in litigation with his promotional company (UFC), as the former world champ attempted to get free of his contract to persue a match with Fedor outside of the UFC.
Fedor has recently said he has grown to consider Randy a friend and respects him too much to want to fight him. Representatives from his camp did however say the Russian wants to fight the current UFC Heavyweight King Brock Lesnar.
They want a co-promoted fight and as we all know the UFC will probably never make that happen.
Emelianenko, who hasn’t lost an MMA match since December of 2000, recently dropped his first Combat Sambo match in eight years on Saturday night.
The loss came at the hands of World Combat Sambo Champion, Bulgarian Blagoi Ivanov. The two fighters met in the semifinals in the 2008 World Combat Sambo Championships. Fedor was outpointed and lost the match by a score of 8-5 to Ivanov.
Word on the mat is several organizations and MMA promotion are expressing interest in bring "the fighter who beat Fedor" to compete in MMA cages in the U.S. The WAMMA champion is currently set to defend his title on January 24th against Andrei “Pit bull” Arlovski.
On Nov 18th, while in Toronto promoting the upcoming super match between welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre and Lightweight Champion, B.J. Penn, Dana White said he is interested in bringing the face of women’s MMA, Gina Carano, to the WEC to compete.
"Gina Carano is a star, I think she's talented. I think she's got all the tools, so what I'm willing to do is bring Gina into the WEC. We could do fights whenever there's a challenger for Gina. That's how I'll test the waters and see how it goes," White said.
Baring her situation with ProElite, (she is still under contract with the defunct company and currently in career limbo) a Carano fight would be the first female fight on a Zuffa card and huge step for WEC's marketability. If a potential deal was struck, Carano could count herself among the stars of the promotion along with Urijah Faber and Bantamweight Champion (135lbs) Miguel Torres.
Adding a female division to the WEC now would be perfect timing. After the December 3rd Miguel Torres-Manny Tapia card, the WEC is set to cut the light heavy and middleweight divisions. Some of the organizations top names such as Chael Sonnen, Steve Cantwell, Brian Stann, Mark Munoz, and Jake Rosholt have been confirmed as being transferred to the UFC.
Former Middleweight Champion, Paulo Filho, was considered a front runner for the hike up to UFC and a high paid showdown with pound for pound king, Anderson Silva. However, after failing to make weight, an awful performance, substance abuse problems the fact that he said he would not face Silva due to their friendship.
Along with Filho, UFC President Dana White dropped superstar Jon Fitch from the UFC roster as well. The # 2 ranked welterweight in the world was released from his UFC contract on Wednesday and later re-instated. MMARated.com is reporting that the welterweight is back in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
MMARated reported that Fitch spoke with UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta via phone, and the pair had managed to clear the air and that the fighter would return to the UFC and he would sign the company's much-maligned video game licensing agreement that was the cause of all the hub-bub.
Wednesday night while on Hardcore Sports Radio Fitch said that he was dropped from the promotion due to the fact he refused to sign an agreement that would have relinquished his likeness rights for the upcoming UFC video game.
Fitch said he refused to sign the agreement but his decision wasn't based on compensation. "The video game agreement that they have that they wanted us to sign was basically we don‘t get anything for it," he said. "We get free publicity and promotion from the game, which is great, no problem. The problem is it's a lifetime exclusive contract. That means we would never ever be able to work with any video game companies other than the one the UFC provides."
"It's pretty incredible that they'd go to those lengths for something like this, over a video game," he continued.
Fitch also said UFC President Dana White presented his representatives an ultimatum to sign or be scrapped.
In an interview with Yahoo Sports on Wednesday, White said the UFC would no longer do business with Fitch's fight team, American Kickboxing Academy. The outspoken White has stated that Fitch was not released because of the video game situation but rather because the UFC has issue's when dealing with his camp.
"We're looking for guys who want to work with us and not against us, and frankly I'm just so [expletive] sick of this [expletive] it's not even funny," White told Yahoo Sports. "Affliction is still out there trying to build its company. Let go work with them. Let him see what he thinks of those. [Expletive] him. These guys aren't partners with us. [Expletive] them. All of them, every last [expletive] one of them."
Fitch had won eight straight fights before dropping a gutsy decision to St. Pierre. His undefeated run tied Royce Gracie's for the most consecutive wins in the UFC.
"I never wanted anything more than to fight in the UFC and be a UFC champ," said Fitch.
The fighter reluctantly singed away his video game rights but maintained the vehicle that drives his dream. Jon Fitch will fight Akihiro Gono at UFC 94, as previously planned.
Source: Ring Side Report
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