(‘And what is deal with airline food? Is no good, am I right?’)

Want to hear something totally insane and probably not true?  That was a rhetorical question.  Of course you want to hear this.  According to a Croatian newspaper article translated for us by Robert of betwwx.com, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic’s next bout will be this July in an Affliction/Dream co-promotional event full of all kinds of fights that only sort of make sense.  

The article quotes Cro Cop as saying that he’d like to fight four times this year (he knows it’s already mid-April and he’s fought zero times so far this year, right?) and five times in 2010, so the credibility of this report seems strained to begin with.  But then the article declares that the “only certainty” is a Cro Cop-Alistair Overeem rematch on a July 20 Affliction/Dream co-promotion in Japan.  Also on that card, according to this report, will be Fedor Emelianenko taking on Jeff Monson and Josh Barnett facing off against Andrei Arlovski.

Whoa, let’s back up a second, Croatian newspaper.  Now who’s this Fedor guy anyway and what has he done to deserve a shot at "The Snowman"?

Obviously, this story has an odor of bullshit about it right now, but if you’re looking for reasons to believe it you can comfort yourself with these semi-verified facts: a) Affliction has no idea what they’re doing for their third event at this point, so it’s not as if this would require a lot of rescheduling on their part, b) Even though a Barnett-Fedor main event seems like the logical conclusion to this grand Affliction MMA experiment, that fight’s been looking doubtful lately and Barnett is the only one who seems to care, c) Jeff Monson really wants to fight Fedor, and Japan is clearly the only place for a bout like that.

Whaddaya say, convinced yet?  Us neither.  You can’t rule it out completely since both Affliction and Dream are liable to do anything, but at the same time we don’t recommend organizing your summer vacation plans around this event.  That’s why we’ve planned our summer around the series of unexplained explosions known as the “Transformers” sequel.  That and swimming.  It’s just prudent planning.