Update: Fedor contract unconfirmed, Barnett/steroids

[Julius Seeker]

A major fight featuring Josh Barnett (who left the UFC years ago after a brutal domination of Randy Couture, taking his championship belt) against longtime reigning #1 fighter Fedor Emelianenko has been cancelled.

Affliction struggled to get a replacement; but in the end decided that promotion would be impossible by August 1. Affliction cancelled the show; the previous two they put on were the two most stacked and expensive cards in North American MMA history; essentially they tried to do what Pride did in Japan - but MMA isn't nearly as big here as it was in Japan a few years back (6-7 million fans here vs tens of millions in Japan); so the economy was too small for any success. Affliction seems to have since put their MMA promotion aspirations on indefinite hold as they are now officially UFC sponsors again.

Dana White, before these events, recently was very optimistic about Fedor saying that he was going to be a part of the company in early 2010; his first fight would be against Brock Lesnar. First Brock fights the winner of Valesquez and Carwin.

Things look very interesting on the UFC heavyweight front now; UFC should get Brett Rogers and Alistair Overeem though - in my opinion; these two are the best there is right now on the heavyweight division now without Barnett, and aside from Fedor and potentially Brock Lesnar. Another interesting prospect is Bobby Lashley. I know it is too much to ask to get the K-1 guys into the North American scene, leave alone UFC (Jerome LeBanner and Remy Bonjasky are ****ing awesome!).

[SineSwiper]

Just don't understand the point of steroids in MMA. It's divided by weight for one, and it's more than just muscle in that game. It would be like the quarterback in football getting caught for doing steroids.

[Kupek]

Steroids are for more than just building muscle. Training is hard on your body; you're limited to how much you can train by how fast your body can recover. Steroids can help your body recover faster, which lets you train more.

In short, yes, steroids can help conditioning.

Also, keep in mind that some fighters drop as much as 20 pounds before weigh-ins. Some fighters are close to 15 pounds heavier when they step in the cage than when they stepped on the scale. So if you know how to do the cut right, extra muscle mass can help too.

[SineSwiper]

Steroids are for more than just building muscle. Training is hard on your body; you're limited to how much you can train by how fast your body can recover. Steroids can help your body recover faster, which lets you train more.

There are other drugs that can help out with that, which are still legal by the UFC, and are even advertised around the matches.

Also, keep in mind that some fighters drop as much as 20 pounds before weigh-ins. Some fighters are close to 15 pounds heavier when they step in the cage than when they stepped on the scale. So if you know how to do the cut right, extra muscle mass can help too.

Some would call that cheating...

[Kupek]

Steroids work better than those supplements. Far better. (If those other ones work at all - I have serious doubts about the efficacy of supplements that don't have to be regulated by the FDA. Simply, if it actually did anything significant to your body, I'd expect the FDA to regulate it.)

It's not cheating if anyone can do it. The weight cut is just a part of the sport - wrestlers have been doing it for decades. (Real wrestlers - like the kind at your high school, and at the college and Olympic level.) Cutting too much weight can be dangerous if not done well, but if done well, it's a huge advantage. Both BJ Penn and Georges St. Pierre weighed in at 170 pounds before their fight, but GSP was the bigger, stronger athlete in that fight. He probably had 10 pounds on Penn in that fight.

It's also not cheating because if you do it poorly - try to cut too much weight too close to the fight - it hurts. Cutting too much weight can kill a fighter's conditioning. It's seen by most as another part of training.

[Julius Seeker]

Alistair Overeem used to cut insane amounts down to 205; and he would be wrecked for his fights. For the amount he did cut, I am not sure; but he is one of the heavier heavyweights now (255-260) and he is doing awesome now.

I don't consider weight cutting cheating; but I really dislike it. Some people can do it better than others. The main thing is that weight cutters enter the ring the next day re-hydrated and weighing a lot more than they did earlier. I am against it personally; but understand its usefulness in keeping fights on schedule.

[Julius Seeker]

An update on the speculation that Fedor will be coming to the UFC; it's happening according to the LA Times and his first challenger will be UFC champion Brock Lesnar. Whether this fight comes before the Valesquez/Carwin winner is not certain. I would guess it comes before, Dana White initially speculated that Fedor would fight at Affliction, and then fight again in early 2010. At this point, it could probably be fit before the Carwin/Valesquez challenge comes in.

This would be one of those awesome fights, like Fedor vs Nog 2, Fedor vs. Cro Cop, or in other categories: GSP vs Hughes 2, that potential bout between Liddell and Wanderlei if it happened 3 years ago, and other such fights. It's the best vs the best. Brock Lesnar is a very well known celebrity in North America through hiss career in WWE and now as UFC champion; Fedor is one of the most popular MMA fighters of all time worldwide (He was huge in Japan, which had by far the largest MMA audiences a few years back in the pre-Yakuza scandal PRIDE era) as holding a very very long streak, and the holder of the PRIDE championship and World MMA championship.

Whatever happens, it's going to be a really great fight. The most likely outcome is that Fedor finds a hole early on, and takes advantage endding the fight quickly as he had previously done with other large opponents. Or it could be a drawn out fight more similar to Schildt or Hunt where Fedor will eventually come out on top. Still, Lesnar has KO power, he is very dangerous; anyone like that has the potential to win - just history shows it is unlikely. Fedor has fought and defeated many of the best heavyweight strikers in MMA history. If Lesnar wins, he will have accomplished what no other fighter has yet accomplished.

Fedor can be compared to only a few other fighters in history: Mike Tyson, who destroyed everyone who was put in front of him in the sport of boxing, he ate peoples children for breakfast, and shit nails, he was seen as an invincible unstoppable fighter. Then there was Igor Vovchanchyn who was seen as undefeatable in MMA comptetition, he was like a demon in the ring, no one could withstand his intensity and power. There was also Alexander Karelin who won all the world championships and Olympic championships in Superheaveywweight and Open weight, undefeated in over a decade (the guy could lift up a 300+ struggling human being, and throw him over his head with ease. There is one other thing the others had in common, they all lost. Now there is Fedor who has exceeded Vovchanchyn's legacy, he will eventually lose, but that hasn't happened yet.

[Julius Seeker]

Fedor/UFC update:

CBS radio's Dave Carmichael has reported that the UFC has offered Fedor a 30 million dollar contract over 6 fights. In comparison, the largest contract ever signed by a UFC fighter "Brock Lesnar" was 500 thousand per fight. Chuck Liddell made 250K at his peak.

The major blocker here is that Fedor has an existing 2 million per fight deal with a Russian sponsor M-1. UFC has to deal with M-1 representetives in order to secure a contract with Fedor. M-1 wishes to co-promote Fedor's fights with UFC. I am not sure the exact details of this co-promotion; UFC hasn't agreed to that yet, but it does't sound like it will be a big deal, so there should be an an announcement finalized sometime within the next week.

We are likely to see Fedor vs Lesnar at UFC 104 or 105. I am guessing Fedor vs Couture would be next; maybe UFC can get Alistair Overeem for a third fight?

6 fights in UFC with a run of 2-3 fights per year seems like a good way to end off a stellar career. Aside from Rickson, no other major fighter that I can think of has gone off on a win, although Rickson gets heavily criticized for that, perhaps it would be best for his legacy for Fedor to lose a couple of times; pass the torch so to speak - rather than keeping it with him as Rickson did.