During a press conference following DREAM 13, Scott Coker told reporters that Fedor Emelianenko would finally make his Strikeforce return this summer, seven months after his second-round knockout of Brett Rogers: 

Better than nothing, I guess — although it’s still ridiculous that Fedor is fighting another contender, while Strikeforce champion Alistair Overeem is booked for a non-title exhibition against Brett Rogers in May. No other matches have been announced for Strikeforce’s June card yet.

The relationship between Strikeforce and M-1 Global appeared strained in recent weeks, with reports of renegotiations making the rounds. But although the dispute may sound like a money grab, M-1 says that what they’re really after is greater brand visibility. From a report by Dave Meltzer on Yahoo!:

According to a report on Sherdog, Strikeforce light-heavyweight champion Gegard Mousasi has ended his professional relationship with M-1 Global, the promotional outfit best known for handling the career of Fedor Emelianenko. As Mousasi wrote in an e-mail:

Mousasi added that he’d like to come back to the U.S. to train with Josh Thomson at American Kickboxing Academy; the two fighters recently became acquainted in Miami during the last Strikeforce show. So what spurred Mousasi’s split with M-1? Apparently, they wouldn’t keep him on the payroll for life. Mousasi’s former manager at M-1, Apy Echteld, told MMA Junkie that the Last Gypsy broke ties when M-1 refused to sign him into a long-term management deal that would give the Dutch-Armenian fighter "lifetime security" — a contract setup reportedly enjoyed by Fedor Emelianenko.

Mousasi is still under contract with Strikeforce for as many as seven fights, and plans to enter DREAM’s light-heavyweight grand prix later this year. His next match is rumored to be against Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal in April.

(Dana White and the UFC’s Chief Financial Officer, Bobo, share a laugh over M-1′s contract demands.)

One of the things you have to like about Dana White is that when he gets in front of a national audience, he really steps up his trash talk game.  When it’s just the MMA media, sure, he might recycle the same tired phrases and well-worn burns, but talking to ESPN’s Jim Rome today, he brought out some new material with regards to those M-1 Global jokers and their absurd demands during the UFC’s Fedor negotiations:

"Fedor’s not afraid to come over and fight or do any of that stuff.  He’s got nutty managers.  These guys are from Russia, coming to America trying to strong-arm us into some deal we won’t want to do.  Go do that to the butcher down the street in Russia.  It won’t work over here in the United States."

Please, tell me I’m not the only one who feels like launching into a U.S.A chant right now. So let’s see, instead of calling Fedor’s management a bunch of greedy, crazy Russians, they’ve now become "nutty" Russians who are trying to run some sort of MMA-themed protection racket.  Nice little paradigm shift, DW.  Just one more reason why it really sucks to be a Russian butcher.

(Props: all elbows)

AllElbows.com‘s latest bit of King Mo-related video hype focuses on Mo’s last fight against Ryo Kawamura at Sengoku 7. It was the first time that Lawal wasn’t able to finish an opponent, and he explains that was because his knee was injured during the fight, not because he couldn’t destroy Kawamura if he wanted to. Blame Dean Lister. Now that Mo has gone through knee surgery and rehab, he’s ready to start knocking fools out again.

As you may recall, his next opponent will be Mark Kerr, the waaaaaaay-past-his-prime UFC/PRIDE old-schooler, who’s currently riding a four-fight losing streak. Kerr is a replacement for Don Frye, who disgraced himself by pulling out of the fight. The ridiculous squash match will headline M-1 Global’s "Breakthrough" event in Kansas City next Friday, which will be broadcast live on HDNet beginning at 9 p.m. CT. Other fights on the card include Karl Amoussou vs. John Doyle, and that weird sparring exhibition between Fedor Emelianenko and Gegard Mousasi. If you can find the motivation to DVR this thing at some point in the next week, congratulations — you are a hardcore MMA fan.

After the jump: A classic-rock soundtracked tribute to heavyweight fighters and the interconnectedness of all humanity.

Hey, who wants a "vintage" CagePotato Hall of Fame t-shirt? Well too bad, dickface — unless you’re one of the similarly-surnamed commenters who made us LOL with their comments this week:

asswipe jones on "Holy Shit! Alert: Fedor Emelianenko Signs With Strikeforce, Will Debut This Fall": they’re? called M-1 for a reason, they have Motherfucking 1 fighter.

Levi Jones on "This Is What a Fix Looks Like": Mark Coleman, the night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s PRIDE fucking with you. Fuck PRIDE. PRIDE only hurts, it never helps.

Well done, gents. Please send your real names, addresses, and shirt-sizes to feedback@cagepotato.com in order to claim your tees.

Addendum 1: While searching for the above image, I came across this. Figured I’d share.

Addendum 2: "Ben vs. Ben" returns to SIRIUS Fight Club today at 6 p.m. ET; channel 127 for SIRIUS subscribers, channel 104 for XM peeps. Show your support and tune in!

Fedor Emelianenko, Strikeforce’s Scott Coker, M-1 Global’s Vadim Finkelchtein, and Showtime’s Ken Hershman held a press conference this afternoon to discuss Strikeforce’s plan for Fedor, and refute some of the alleged misinformation that the UFC released about their negotiations with the Russian heavyweight king. You can read recaps here and here. Though Fedor’s next opponent doesn’t appear to be finalized yet, there were still some eyebrow-raising bits:

— Emelianenko called the offer he got from the UFC “miserable,” and nowhere near the six-fight, $30 million reports that circulated on the internet. Finkelchtein said that if those rumored numbers about Fedor’s contract offer were true, they would have signed with the UFC.

— Finkelchtein claimed that the idea of Anderson Silva as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world is a product of the UFC media machine, and Brock Lesnar is also just a product of the UFC’s hype. He said that Brett Rogers is better than Brock Lesnar.

(Props: Sherdog via MMA Mania)

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker can’t even take one goddamned vacation to Italy without the world falling apart back home. In this video interview, Coker responds to all the recent speculation about Fedor Emelianenko‘s possible signing to Strikeforce (it’s not happening yet, at least), and a reported last-minute attempt to merge Strikeforce with Affliction (not even close). Coker explains that Fedor’s current crop of suitors include boxing promoters and network television, and discusses why he didn’t want to "sell out" Brett Rogers for the Fedor fight.

On the actual reason for Affliction’s demise, Coker says "escalating the fighter purses way beyond the true value, I think sooner or later the natural laws of economics apply to all businesses, and it finally applied to Affliction." How true. And if Fedor ever did sign with Strikeforce? "I feel pretty confident that we could give him four or five different opponents that would make sense for him."

(The hoax match-up the world has been talking about since never.)

It’s a crazy rumor no more.  Now Fedor Emelianenko vs. Shinya Aoki is a crazy fact, according to press release sent out today by M-1 Global.  The two will square off in a "five-minute special sparring exhibition" at the "M-1 Challenge Presented by Affliction" on April 29 in Tokyo.  So what will the lightweight and the heavyweight try to do to each other over the course of the most bizarre and pointless five minutes in MMA history?  According to the press release:

Complete rules of the Fedor vs. Aoki sparring exhibition are still being negotiated, but it will be presented as a special attraction during a 19-bout event scheduled to feature head-to-head M-1 Challenge matchups between host country Japan vs. England, Team USA West vs. South Korea, and Spain vs. France.

Well, that’s appropriately vague.  I guess this is what happens when you start to run out of credible opponents (who won’t ask for a lot money to fight you) but you still want to get out of the house and break a sweat: you spar with a skinny guy in tights.  Sounds reasonable.  Oh, wait.  No, it’s completely insane.  But what do we expect at this point?

(“Hey, shit happens, right?”)

Contradicting his earlier claims that M-1 Global’s relationship with Fedor Emelianenko was still A-OK, Monte Cox recently went on Sherdog’s Savage Dog Show to set the record straight: Cox and Sibling Entertainment have parted ways with Emelianenko, and the “M-1″ name is now wholly under control by Emelianenko’s managers. But even though their marquee fighter is gone, the former American faction of M-1 still intends to keep working towards putting on its first MMA show. As Cox told Sherdog:

“The group that formed M-1 Global is still together and we’re going to remain together and put on an MMA event. It won’t be under the name M-1 Global because that is definitely associated with Emelianenko Fedor and the Russians, and we’ve come to an agreement that we’re going to part ways…I am looking at June 14 to do our first show in Chicago…It won’t be the UFC. We don’t have that kind of money to throw away. Now, without Fedor, I expect the show in Chicago to turn a profit.”

Cox also admitted that Emelianenko never signed a contract with M-1 Global; Fedor only signed a letter of intent that prevented him from competing outside of M-1 Global during contract negotiations:

Might as well pop some Excedrin now, because your head will be aching after this one. According to ADCombat.com, M-1 Global is quietly setting up its first event in Russia, which will go down at St. Petersburg’s 3000-seat Ice Palace on April 3rd. One of the promotional images is above; the event will be headlined by Aleksander Emelianenko (against a yet-unnamed opponent), with M-1/PRIDE/Bodog vets Roman Zentsov and Amar Suloev also scheduled to fight (ditto). According to ADCombat’s anonymous “Russian insider”:

“With the Russian elections last weekend, advertising before [then] was next to impossible, as most attention is focused on the elections. The smaller venue may indicate a good bit of pragmatism on the part of the promoters, since they are only going to have a month or so to really push the event.”

So, by now you’re thinking, “if this is supposed to be an M-1 Global event, why does that ad clearly say M-1 Mix Fight?” Very good question. ADCombat writes:

In a previous conversation, M-1 Global’s Monte Cox confirmed that [Vadim] Finkelstein and [Apy] Echteld would be promoting events with the M-1 Global name, however the infrastructure for the show and promotion are independent of what Cox will use when M-1 Global begins to move forward in the United States.

Which explains absolutely nothing, considering that Finkelchtein isn’t promoting this event with M-1 Global’s name, but under his old Mix Fight label. According to RussianMMA.com, the St. Petersburg event will actually be the second leg of the not-very-well-publicized “M-1 Challenge” that we briefly mentioned last month. The first M-1 Challenge event was apparently held last Sunday in the Netherlands, with the Fedor-coached Russian Red Devil Sports Club competing against France’s Team Amossou, and a Netherlands team taking on a pack of Germans; shockingly, the Russians lost three out of five matches to the Frenchmen. (Don’t ask how the Netherlands/Germany matchups went down, because results weren’t published on M1MixFight.com, and news hasn’t yet trickled down to any other American MMA websites.)

RussianMMA reports that the April 3rd M-1 Challenge event will include teams from Russia, Japan, and “Europe,” and Emelianenko/Zentsov/Suloev will be competing in superfights. Checking M-1 Global’s official site, of course, confirmed nothing — it hasn’t been updated since New Year’s Eve, and you can’t expect Monte Cox to keep tabs on Vadim all the time. Especially when M-1 Global is such a disorganized pit of confusion…

To clarify the miscommunication and conflicting rumors generated by M-1 Global and its maverick Russian arm Mix Fight M-1, Sam Caplan tracked down Fedor Emelianenko’s manager Vadim Finkelchtein for an e-mail interview on his ProElite blog. (By the way, I’m spelling Vadim’s last name as it has appeared in M-1 Global’s press releases and on their website, not as every MMA journalist in the United States insists on spelling it.) But between Vadim’s shaky written English and his inherent caginess, not much was accomplished. Witness the first question:

Sam Caplan: There has been a great deal of mis-communication in regard to Fedor’s involvement with a card to be held in Japan on Dec. 31. M-1 Global president Monte Cox has said it will not be an M-1 Global event yet a statement made on Mixfight.ru, which I believe is affiliated with M-1 Global, claims that it will be an Mixfight M-1 event. I realize there’s a difference in the phrase “M-1 Global” and “Mixfight M-1″ but both are using the M-1 name. Can you clear up any confusion by stating who will be promoting the Dec. 31 card in Japan that Fedor will be fighting on?

Vadim Finkelstein: An event scheduled for December, 31 in conjunction with M-1 Global and ex-Pride staff. We plan a long-term collaboration with them. Mixfight M-1 is a Russian MMA organization which makes part of M-1 Global. M-1 Global intends to hold events worldwide.

Great. Thanks for clearing that up. There are lots more non-statements like this one in the interview, but I’ll leave you with this excerpt, which may give hope to the easily encouraged:

As reported on MixFight.ru and Fight Opinion, a press conference was held in Japan today to shed more light on the MMA show headlined by Fedor Emelianenko on New Year’s Eve. The event will be “supported” by M-1 Global, and will feature Shinya Aoki, Mitsuhiro Ishida, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Gilbert Melendez, Hayato Mach Sakurai, Hidehiko Hasegawa, Ricardo Arona, Kazuo Misaki, Joachim Hansen and Luis Azeredo. The specific match-ups don’t seem to be announced yet, and as you’ve probably noticed, Hong Man Choi is suspiciously absent from the list. As the MixFight story says, “There are negotiations going on with other famous ex-Pride fighters who would contribute to the event,” and the show will be broadcast by SkyPerfecTV PPV. For another brilliant example of MMAFightline declaring things in headlines that are sourced nowhere in the article, go here.

It’s not the first time that this rumor has been brought up — so take it with every grain of salt you can get your hands on — but M-1 Mix Fight (the Russian precursor to M-1 Global) has reported that the first M-1 Global event will take place in Japan’s Saitama Super Arena on New Year’s Eve, and that more details will be posted on the site later.

Whoa, fingers crossed! But there’s one thing that concerns me. When they say “No one other than four times Pride Heavyweight Champion Fedor Emelianenko will fight in the main event,” could that possibly mean that Fedor will be in the ring by himself? People, I wouldn’t rule out any possibility at this point…

From time to time, I like to check out the M-1 Global website to see what’s new with the fledgling, Fedor Emelianenko-mascoted organization. You’d think they’d be hustlin’ non-stop to build buzz, and making regular announcements to maintain the heat created by their first press conference last month. But the website has only posted one piece of “news” since then — a rundown of M-1′s global management team. It’s encouraging to know that while they still haven’t formally announced the signing of any fighters besides Fedor, Joost Raimond will be responsible for directing day-to-day operations in Eurasia.

But at least their franchise player is keeping somewhat busy.

So, it turns out that Marc Ecko’s only role in last night’s press conference at the Complex Media offices was donating the space. He hasn’t invested in a piece of M-1, and he won’t be branding anything else with an asterisk, as far as I know. You can all exhale.

Here’s what actually went down: Sibling Entertainment Group CEO Mitchell Maxwell, veteran MMA fight manager Monte Cox, Fedor Emelianenko and his manager Vadim Finkelchtein gathered to announce the formation of Sibling Sports LLC for the purpose of creating M-1 Global, a new worldwide MMA organization. Cox will act as the CEO, and Fedor will be its first marquee fighter, signed to a two-year/six-fight contract. I was there with my trusty Canon Digital Elph — easily the smallest camera in the room, and the only one without a telephoto lens. Regardless…

This guy walked out about 15 minutes after the press conference was originally slated to begin. For a brief moment, I thought that Fedor was going to announce that he’s grown out his hair and will be dropping down to the lightweight division.

Here’s Vadim and Fedor, seated with their interpreters. Matt Kaplan at FiveOuncesofPain.com described these women as “stunningly beautiful,” but I don’t know…to me, they seemed more like the “good from afar, but far from good” type. Still, having female interpreters is apparently a huge status symbol in Russia.