M-1 Global Says Fedor Should Return By Summer

Sherdog talked to Evgeni Kogan, M-1 Global’s Director of Operations who shared the following update on the status of Fedor Emelianenko:

“I think June, July is realistic (for Emelianenko’s return).”

“We were renegotiating. I think we’re pretty much at the end of that road,” said Kogan. “After the CBS show, we thought that the terms needed a little bit tweaking — nothing major, just a little bit of tweaking. So, we had a round of negotiations with Strikeforce. Everything went positively. We’re pretty much at the end.”

“Obviously, we are much more than the management company for Fedor,” said Kogan. “For us, it’s really important that the M-1 Global brand is acknowledged on these co-promotion events. As much as the partners made a lot of effort to acknowledge the co-branding, the media basically picked up on the fact that it was Strikeforce and kind of forgot about everything else, which wasn’t the most ideal for us.”

That does confirm much of the speculation over what part of the contract CBS/Strikeforce had failed to live up to. M-1 appears to feel like they were treated more as an advertiser than a co-promoter for the event. Knowing how M-1 does business, I would wager that it specifies very clearly in the contract how M-1 is to be presented on these broadcasts.

Regardless of the fact that M-1 really seems non-existent at times when it comes to promotion, if Strikeforce and CBS failed to live up to the contract then they opened the door that led to these negotiations.