(Prof. Fedor‘s freshman seminar on Chaucer, brought to you by St. Petersburg University in co-promotion with M-1 Global.  Next week, "The Parson’s Tale"!)

As Mike Goldberg would say, “It is aaallllll over!”  The Great Fedor Sweepstakes of 2009 has finally come to an end, and it’s Strikeforce who netted the Russian heavyweight with, according to today’s Strikeforce press release, “a historic, multi-fight agreement that will see him headline mega-events co-promoted by world championship promotions STRIKEFORCE and M-1 Global.”

That’s right, Strikeforce caved to the co-promotion demands that proved to be the immovable object separating Fedor and the UFC.  Get ready for lots of awkward speeches from Vadim Finkelchtein and plenty of M-1 Global logos plastered all over the arena when Strikeforce comes to your town.  But the big question is, now that they’ve got him what will they do with him?

(‘It’s quite simple, gentleman. All we require is a suitcase full of money, a crate of automatic rifles, twelve underaged prostitutes, and a helicopter to take us to the airport. Oh, and the helicopter must be painted with the M-1 Global logo. Do we have a deal?’)

Now that Affliction has gone back to being merely the maker of terrible t-shirts and Fedor Emelianenko has lost another home to fight in, this should mean that the way is clear for him to sign with the UFC, right?  Enter Vadim Finkelchtein, also known around the Zuffa offices as Crazy Russian #1.  Yesterday he spoke to the official M-1 Global site about his new plans to profit off Fedor’s success now that Affliction is gone.  Fedor and his people are all in the U.S. and they plan to talk with several different organizations over the next few days, but Finkelchtein isn’t about to make this thing easy on anyone:

“This is the moment of truth that the UFC has talked about. Fedor and I are here in the States. If they want to come out and fly here, we are ready to conduct negotiations. Of course it still doesn’t imply we are ready to accept any conditions they’ll throw at us. We want to talk to the UFC about having Fedor compete against some of their fighters, but only within the framework of co-promotional efforts with M-1 Global.”