MMA : Friday August 28th M-1 Global Breakthrough on HDNET
Why should we care? Fedor Mousasi exhibition and MMA Alliances
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Author: TJ Tay
Date: 8/28/2009
On HDNet (Marc Cuban) the following: HDNet Fights Presents : M-1 Global Breakthrough - LAWAL VS KERR. Two former college wrestling standouts go head-to-head in the main event as "King" Mo Lawal takes on Mark "The Smashing Machine" Kerr. The legendary Fedor Emelianenko also meets up with Gegard Mousasi in an exhibition match. Event is in Kansas City.
Why should we pay close attention to this item? And why are Fedor and Mousasi on an exhibition match on the fight card? The second part is probably easiest to answer. They needed some star power to push this event and purposely put these two exhibition fighters on the poster for the promotion of the fight. But below the surface there is much more brewing.
For one M-1 Global (A Dutch Netherlands based MMA organization with a very good name in Europe) will be hosting its first major show (rather than co-promoting with other organizations) at Memorial Hall in
Kansas City with this event. Previously M-1 was mostly known for the MMA team competition, but their slowly also focusing on individual events. The face of M-1 Global is President Vadim Finkelstein who is part owner and manager of Fedor Emelianenko. Fedor just signed with Strikeforce the new MMA league backed by the cable network Showtime, that swallowed the defunct Affliction/EliteXC fighters and is trying to establish itself in North American.
Getting confused yet? It gets more complex. Here comes Dream. Who and what is Dream? Remember a famous little MMA organization that ruled the world called Pride Fighting Championships? After UFC brutally took Pride down (more on this later) the defunct management of Pride started anew with their own little project called Dream. Dream is sister organization of the world famous kick boxing organization K-1 and is already very popular in the East. It's just a matter of time before they get more attention here in North America. This might even be closer than we think. Dream also has a contract with Marc Cubans HDNet to show their events. Besides the live events you can also catch the reruns of Dream events. Their next live event is Dream 11 which will be on October 6, 2009
DREAM.11: Feather Weight Grand Prix 2009 Final Round. Then to top this off on August 5, 2009,
Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker announced that the two promotions had signed a formal alliance. All the partners under this new alliance will share top fighters while still growing new ones in their own competitions. Are you following this? This is how the alliance breaksdown from a geographical view point.
-North America (Strikeforce)
-Europe (M1 Global)
-Asia (Dream).
In my opinion UFC is currently the most exiting organization but they made one big mistake in my eyes; In their quest to become the world biggest MMA organization they went hard after Pride who had ruled the MMA world for years. They finally seized an opportunity to take them over after Pride management got into some financial trouble and had to sell it. Even though they promised to keep Pride alive they have not done anything to make it work. They just took it and left it bleeding to die off. One thing is for sure, for the hardcore MMA fan UFC has to understand that Pride will always be the top dog no matter how much you try to push it to the background. UFC would not be here if it was not for Pride. UFC had a great opportunity and let it go to waist. They could have used Pride operate in the East to keep building fighters and making this a breeding ground for UFC.
And so back to the event of tonight. So after understanding this whole tangled web and alliance slowly brewing in the background M1 is putting an exhibition show between Fedor, considered the worlds best and probably the most exiting MMA fighter in the world and career explosion of Gegard Mousasi (
Dutch-
Armenian) who recently demolished Renato Babalu Sobral to become the Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Champion. This exhibition might actually be an actual fight in about 2-3 years as Mousasi slowly goes up in weight as he becomes older. He just moved up from middleweight to light heavy. Some are not aware that he is still the Middle weight champion for what organization? DREAM!! Yes it is all clicking now.
The actual event is not the most exiting one. More exiting are the behind the scenes chess game being played by these MMA organizations. I mean the main event with "King" Mo Lawal vs Mark the smashing machine Kerr. Kerr has not been not been a crowd drawer since his famous Pride being a veracious fighter and the days on HBO documentary in 2003 "
The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr." that at that time solidified suspicion that the MMA fighters were either on pain killers, steroids or some other drug. One of the best items shown on HBO to this date and really a classic. It is difficult to find a copy of that specific program but here is a link where can watch it:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtb87_mark-kerr-smashing-machine-p1_sport.
You can catch part 2 on the same page. Its a great way to reflect back on how far we have come.
Also one to watch could be Ammousou vs Doyle which had a pretty heated weigh in/photo session in the likes of the Pride days of Wanderlei Silva. Amoussou is a French phenomenon who serves as an undercover police officer in his native France. Amoussou pushed his forehead into Doyle's at the first photo try. Second try Doyle jammed his forehead into Amoussou before M-1 Global officials ended the photo opportunity early.
The event should serve as a warm-up for all MMA fans before tomorrows UFC101 event
M-1 Global Breakthrough
HDNET 10pm E.T.
Memorial Hall - Kansas City
Fight Card:
12. Heavyweight (3×5):
Muhammed King Mo Lawal (4-0) vs.
Mark The Smashing Machine Kerr (15-10)
11. Special Sparring Exhibition:
The Last Emperor Fedor Emelianenko vs.
The Dreamcatcher Gegard Mousasi
10. Middleweight (3×5):
Lucio The Spartan Linhares (12-4) vs.
Mikhail Zayats (8-3)
9. Heavyweight (3×5):
Jessie Gibbs (8-2) vs.
Rob Broughton (10-4-1)
8. Middleweight (3×5):
Karl Psycho Amoussou (10-2-1) vs.
The Iron Bull John Doyle (9-8)
7. Heavyweight (3×5):
Lloyd Kadillac Marshbanks (17-8) vs.
Michael Kita (5-3)
6. Lightweight (3×5):
Daisuke Nakamura (19-10) vs.
Ferrid The Hurricane Kheder (14-3)
5. Heavyweight (3×5):
Rogent Lloret (7-1) vs.
Alexey Oleinik (24-4)
4. Lightweight (3×5):
Eric Marriott (13-1) vs.
Tim Bazer (9-6)
3. Lightweight (3×5):
Sean P-Town Wilson (18-9) vs.
Josh Orocho (11-6)
2. Welterweight (3×5):
Rudy Bears (9-3) vs.
Brendan Seguin (18-15-1)
1. Female 150 lbs. (3×3):
Andria Caplan (DEBUT) vs.
Mollie Ahlers-Estes (1-0)
