Yes, small miracles do happen (if the headline read “Fedor Emelianenko to fight Brock Lesnar”- well, then we’d be talking walk on water type of sh-t), and just when many around the MMA world rightfully shrugged with doubt when talk of Fedor fighting this summer surfaced, BAM!, good news. Yes, Strikeforce has finally confirmed that “The Last Emperor” will fight Fabricio Werdum June 26th, at the HP Pavilion, in San Jose, California.
Now, if you’ve taken a 2 month hiatus from the world wide web then you might be thinking ‘wasn’t Fedor supposed to fight Werdum anyways?’, well yes, but the Russian’s management, M-1 Global, apparently didn’t care for how their brand was ‘under utilized’ to promote Emelianenko’s Strikeforce / CBS debut in November (you may recall hearing a million person gasp that night when Fedor dropped Rogers). For the last few weeks there have been various reports (including the odd ‘does Fedor even have a contract with Strikeforce?’ wink-wink-nudge-nudge from people like Mr. Dana White) as to whether or not an agreement would be reached between M-1 and Strikeforce, which would get Fedor fighting again, you know, sometime in 2010.
And speaking of CBS, the answer is nope; the June 26th bout is set to roll on Showtime. Not getting Fedor up on network TV one more time seems like a step back no? At any rate, there’s some sweet, sweet fights coming up over the next two months and the schedule just got that much better.