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Russia becomes the hot spot
By Zach Arnold | December 4, 2006
By Zach Arnold
The last few days have been quite interesting in regards to Fedor and Bodog. Bodog and MFC are planning to run an event in St. Petersburg, Russia on 3/3. Fedor is scheduled to appear. This news, much like Gilbert Melendez announcing that he would face Tatsuya Kawajiri (instead of Shin’ya Aoki), appeared only on the Internet and in hardcore MMA media circles.
So it is interesting to watch how PRIDE and the Japanese broadsheet media are deciding to cover these two stories. As we linked to yesterday, Sankei Sports talked about Aoki being frustrated with PRIDE management in regards to his booking on New Year’s Eve (and how he wanted to fight Melendez because this is the fight that all the fans want to see). There was no mention (of course) at all about Melendez’s announcement of a fight with Kawajiri.
Fast forward to tonight. For the last few days, it has been discussed that Fedor, the PRIDE Heavyweight champion, would fight for Bodog. However, you only knew about this story if you are an avid reader of the MMA media sites online. Otherwise, you would have no idea about the story. So, Daily Sports presents the average Japanese reader today with quite an interesting story.
The story claims that PRIDE is going to run an event in Russia in March, marketing the “triumphant return home” of Fedor. The story claims that PRIDE will allow “local staff” (which is MFC) to run the event, much like 2H2H was ran in Holland (that event was ran by Fedor’s manager from Holland, Apy Echteld). The story goes on to say that “there was another event” scheduled in Russia to take place in March with Fedor, but that DSE is denying this will happen.
One of two things arises from this broadsheet story after reading it:
- PRIDE is playing smoke and mirrors in regards to MFC/Bodog and is trying to make it look like it’s their deal in Russia as opposed to what it truly is.
- Fedor’s management is playing two sides against each other (in this case it would be PRIDE & Bodog) and the fight is now becoming a public media war that could backfire big time.
Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, Media, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
Wow…god and I thought boxing had awful politics…this is going to turn into a blood bath and sadly I feel the fans are goign to be the ones screwed.
IF Fedor were to back out of a deal with Bodog, I would guess his Red Devil fighters would likely get screwed.
I was of the understanding that he had indeed signed a contract for the fight. What with the next season of the stinky Bodog show being filmed in Russia and ending with that March show.
LoL, zach with the speculation again, no smoke and mirrors, pride is just doing exactly the same thing they do with 2h2h, letting there fighters fight there, did you not mention yourself, pride plans to expand to other countries, pride is sick right now, they are trying to join with as many people as they canto expand like k-1.
Fedor is a prize, but he needs to be casted with other great fighters or we as fans are truly going to be robbed.