- Mousasi Leaves M-1 Global
- UFC Announces Anderson Silva vs. Demian Maia for UFC 112 Middleweight Title
- McMahon: WWE Network Expected To Launch in Mid 2011
- MusclePharm jumps at promotional opportunity
- Booyaa: King of the Cage Is Making Moves
Mousasi Leaves M-1 Global
Gegard Mousasi has left his management team with M-1 Global, the fighter told Sherdog.com via e-mail on Friday. M-1 Global also confirmed on Friday that the fighter and organization would no longer be working together.
“After careful consideration, I have decided that it is in my best interest to part ways with M-1 Global,” Mousasi wrote in the e-mail. “During the time I spent under their wing, M-1 Global, as a promoter and management company, allowed me to achieve many great things. I appreciate all they have done for me.”
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“The business relationship with M-1 Global is over,” said company representative Apy Echteld. “It was a business decision, but not a personal one and there are no hard feelings.”
Echteld said he would continue to work with Mousasi apart from M-1, although Echteld will be staying with the organization. Echteld added that Emelianenko had expressed his hopes to train with Mousasi again in the future. (Sherdog)
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After M-1 exec nixes Mousasi’s “lifetime security” offer, Strikeforce champ takes career reigns
Mousasi’s longtime manager, Apy Echteld, on Friday told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that the decision to leave was made when an M-1 executive elected not to sign a long-term management proposal that would have given the Dutch-Armenian fighter “lifetime security” – a deal similar to one held by Fedor Emelianenko.
Echteld, who spoke via telephone from Amsterdam, declined to name the executive who had rejected the offer. Echteld also said he was the only party holding a management agreement with Mousasi.
“Basically, what M-1 could provide for him was not what Gegard and me had in mind,” Echteld said.
A separate source with knowledge of the situation said Sergei Matvienko – son of the mayor of St. Petersburg, Russia, and a major M-1 backer – may have been the executive who turned away the proposed deal.
…
In a January interview with MMAjunkie.com, Mousasi said he is a free agent after the August and November fights and was looking for the best career options.
However, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation said Mousasi signed a long-term contract that could tie him to the San Jose, Calif.-based promotion for as many as seven fights. (MMAJunkie) … (MMA Payout’s Perspective)
UFC Announces Anderson Silva vs. Demian Maia for UFC 112 Middleweight Title
Following a hard-fought three round win over Dan Miller at UFC 109 that showed him to be more than just a submission expert, Demian Maia will jump right back into training camp for the biggest fight of his career – an April 10th meeting with UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva in the main event of UFC 112 at Ferrari World on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi.
Maia replaces countryman Vitor Belfort, who underwent emergency surgery on his left shoulder earlier this week to fix a chronic injury that got worse in his training camp for Silva.
“It’s always tough when a top fighter like Vitor Belfort has to pull out of a big title fight, but we have found a high quality replacement,” said UFC President Dana White. “Top contender Chael Sonnen was not available due to injuries sustained in his fight with Nate Marquardt, so top six middleweight Demian Maia will step in to fight for the title. Maia is an Abu Dhabi grappling champion, a five-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champion, and he is 12-1 in MMA and coming off a win over Dan Miller at UFC 109. Anderson Silva vs. Demian Maia will be a matchup between MMA’s best striker and MMA’s best grappler.” (UFC) … (MMA Payout’s Perspective)
NOTE: Heavy’s Jeremy Botter was the first to report this potential match-up before UFC made their official announcement.
McMahon: WWE Network Expected To Launch in Mid 2011
World Wrestling Entertainment is looking to jump into the cable network ring with a proposed network that the pro grappling outfit expects to launch in the next 18 months, according to WWE chairman Vince McMahon.
McMahon, speaking Thursday morning during the company’s 2009 fourth-quarter earnings call, said it has been doing “a great deal of due diligence” toward creating a WWE cable network that would presumably offer live and library content.
“I would hope a year-and-a-half from now we would be up and running,” McMahon said. “We think there is a tremendous opportunity for us out there and quite frankly if things happen as we hope they will happen it will be a really big game changer for the WWE.”
The proposed network would not infringe on the WWE’s current cable and broadcast shows, including USA Network’s WWE Monday Night Raw and MyNetworkTV’s SmackDown , but instead could be used as a marketing tool for those shows.
“We are unique in that what’s good for the WWE is good for all our television partners as far as promotion and things of that nature,” he said. “The new network could tie in and be adjacent to some of those shows and quite frankly our own network can enhance Raw and SmackDown. It would really be a win-win across the board for our television partners, as well as for us.” (Multichannel News)
MusclePharm jumps at promotional opportunity
Cory Gregory, vice president for MusclePharm, said that’s precisely the reason his sports nutrition company eyed the MMA world as a potential giant market.
Gregory, who also owns the Old School Gym in Pataskala with good friend Dustin Myers, and MusclePharm became the official sports nutrition company of World Extreme Cagefighting in January, making March’s Arnold a major event for the company.
The WEC, owned by the same company as the Ultimate Fighting Championship, hosts an event at Nationwide Arena on March 6 in Columbus and hopes to attract as many as 12,000 fans.
“Ten years ago, I was handing programs out at the Arnold to get a free ticket,” Gregory said. “To go from that to being the main sponsor at the big (WEC) event, it’s just awesome.”
MusclePharm had been sponsoring fighters in the UFC and WEC — including Torres, a former bantamweight (135 pounds) champion — before the WEC asked if they would be interested in becoming a key sponsor along the lines of Bud Light, Harley-Davidson and Tapout.
Seeing the continued growth of MMA — not to mention the numerous hours the UFC and WEC are on cable television each week — Gregory, a Pataskala resident, and the company jumped at the chance. MusclePharm has exploded with growth as a result of the decision. (Newark Advocate)
Booyaa: King of the Cage Is Making Moves
After 12 years and more than 300 live shows in the U.S., Canada, and abroad, King of the Cage is hitting the big time. On Feb. 12, the California-based MMA show will make its live national broadcast debut on HDNet, the first in a monthly series produced by reality television mastermind Mark Burnett. And to think it all started with some scribbles in a high school kids notebook.
“When I was a junior in high school, I took an ‘Intro to Business’ class that basically had us develop our own businesses as an assignment,” said Terry Trebilcock, president of King of the Cage (KOTC). “I didn’t know if it was going to be boxing, martial arts or some type of sporting event, but I basically laid out my plans in 11th grade for what would eventually become KOTC.”
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“I was training a few times a week at various gyms. I trained with Joe Stevenson when he was 14-years-old, and Karo Parisyan when he was 15-years-old,” said the promoter. “And to see how advanced they were at that age, I figured [that fight promotion] was more of an opening for me than fighting was!”
In 1998, Trebilcock called Howard Zelener, an attorney he had befriended on the links in 1992. “Terry told me about his [KOTC] idea and he showed me a video of some brutal fight in Brazil to show me what he was hoping to do,” said Zelener. “I was a little stunned, but Terry assured me, ‘This is the next big sport in America.’”
That “brutal fight” that Trebilcock had used to make his point was a bout between Kevin Randleman vs. Tom Erikson from the year before. Trebilcock’s enthusiasm won the attorney over and together they formed King of the Cage.
“Our first event was held in 1999 on a tennis court, which was at a former-chicken-ranch-turned-12-step-recovery-program-camp,” the promoter said with a laugh. “Javi Vazquez, Karo Parisyan and Joe Stevenson all had their first pro fights on that card.” His partner fondly remembers witnessing the development of another MMA powerhouse at that first KOTC event as well.
“The TapouT guys were at the fights too,” said Zelener. “It was the first event where they sold T-shirts out of the trunk of their car…I think they made just enough to fill up their gas tank to get home.” (Fight! Magazine)
QUICK HITS
- Injured Belfort Out at Least Four Months (MMAFighting)
- Rampage Jackson in Nike Olympics Ad (MMAFighting) … (MMA Payout’s Perspective)
- West Virginia State Legislature Considers Mixed Martial Arts Bills (WVNS)
- Couture vs Franklin Possible for August (Sherdog)
- French striker Cyrille Diabate signs UFC deal, meets Luiz Cane at UFC 114 (MMAJunkie)
- Bellator Fighting Championships announces Canadian broadcast deal (MMAJunkie)
- Report: Heavyweight Rolles Gracie released from UFC following debut loss (MMAJunkie)
- Belfort Discusses Surgery, Return (Sherdog)
- Will Sonnen have to make a choice – Silva or politics? (Cage Writer)
- JUSTIN BUCHHOLZ LATEST FIGHTER RELEASED FROM UFC (MMAWeekly)
- Exclusive: Bobby Lashley, Full Time Mixed Martial Artist (Heavy)
- Alexandre “Xande” Ribeiro: I am dropping to 185 pounds (FiveOuncesOfPain)
- MMA has its own race issues to address (ESPN)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
When the media talks about athletes, it’s always the white athletes that are hard workers and blue-collar, and the black athletes are explosive and athletic. Now, anytime you start saying things like ‘racist’ or ‘racism’ in a sport where a high percentage of your fans are white, you’re going to lose a lot of people. (Phil Davis, UFC Prospect)
IMAGE OF THE DAY
TV LISTINGS
- HDNet Fights Presents K-1 Classics (Maeda & Teixeira, 2008) at 8 PM ET on HDNet (02/12/10)
- InsideMMA (Randy Couture, Mike Swick, & Bobby Lashley) at 9 PM ET on HDNet (02/12/10)
- HDNet Fights Presents King of the Cage – Vengeance at 10 PM ET on HDNet (02/12/10)
- Best of Pride FC at 10 PM ET/PT on Spike (02/12/10)
UPCOMING EVENTS
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