(Later Fedor realized that when he had asked whether they could swing by the toy store on their way home from the press conference, Vadim’s response, "We’ll see," actually meant no.)

As we heard over and over again during the the ill-fated negotiations between the UFC and Fedor Emelianenko’s management squadron, M-1 Global is a big time fight promoter and major player on the worldwide MMA scene.  In fact, that’s part of their justification for insisting that the UFC hand over half their profits in exchange for the privilege of having Fedor blast his way through their heavyweight class.  They’ve promoted fights “all over the world,” so everyone else has to pay up.

Only maybe M-1’s execs got a little too distracted while trying to shake down other MMA organizations, because they forgot to actually get a promoter’s license, meaning their planned August 28 event in California – the one where “King Mo” Lawal and Don Frye are supposed to get it on – seems kind of screwed.  

SI.com’s Josh Gross mentioned in his podcast that M-1 never even applied in California, where they had initially planned to hold an event as part of an MMA convention in Los Angeles.  Then there were rumors that they might move the event to Nevada, but the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s Keith Kizer says he’s never even spoken to anyone at M-1.  

There was talk that they might try and put on the show through established promoter Roy Englebrecht, which is do-able, legally speaking, but eventually they’d still need to actually fill out some paperwork.  Their response?  Screw it, let’s move this thing to some lawless wasteland:

Kizer says when he told Engelbrecht to have an M-1 promoter fill out an application he was told the following day, “They’re going to do it in the Midwest instead.”

Sounds like some top-notch promotions people are steering the ship at M-1.  With their event roughly three weeks away, they’ve narrowed it down to a geographic region.  Oklahoma seems like the front-runner to get the event thus far, though who knows what could happen between now and the end of the month.  

The M-1 Global website, which is a marvel in itself, has nothing about the event at all at the moment.  Then again, they also have a section for their  fighter roster which really lets you know how much time they’ve put into this whole web marketing thing.