https://youtu.be/mbv6u5hJZBE
After initially claiming he wouldn’t, Fabio Maldonado ended up filing an official protest regarding the decision of his fight with MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko at the EFN 50 event in Fedor’s home country of Russia. This week, the former UFC contender took things one step further.
Stefano Sartori, who is the manager for Maldonado, spoke with MMAFighting.com just 48 hours after their fight, pointing out that they had appealed the decision to the Russian MMA Union.
Radmir Gabdullin, the Vice President of the Russian MMA Union, who coincidentally enough is a training partner of Fedor’s, released his own statement on the official Russian MMA Union website where he claimed that the decision would not be overturned, and that the appeal was required to be filed within 40 minutes after their fight concluded.
After seeing the statement from Gabdullin, Sartori reached out to the World MMA Association (WMMAA), which oversees the Russian MMA Union, and appealed the result through that channel.
Below is the complete letter that Sartori sent the WMMAA:
Hello.
I am Stefano Sartori, manager of Brazilian MMA fighter Fabio Maldonado and we are writing this email to officially appeal about the result of my client fight against Fedor Emilianenko in June 17 on the Main Event of Fight Nights 50.
We watched the tape many times with cool head and we realized there is no way we lost the fight. It’s either draw or Fabio’s victory. We won R1 with a clear 10-8, not to mention that everyone else in the world besides Official Referee would have stopped that fight. Fedor was tough and came back to won the R2 10-9. The last one is really close and could go either way. So it’s either Fabio’s victory or a draw.
We were extremely surprised to have learned that all the judges of the bout were Russian and they all are employed by no other than Fedor Emelianenko who is the president of Russian MMA Union that sanctioned these judges.
Even worse, Radmir Gabdullin who was the head judge of the bout is the Russian MMA Union’s vice-president. You can see it here http://unionmma.ru/structure/
If it is not a clear case of conflict of interest, I don’t know what to call this. To have a fair judgment of this fight it is required to have independent international judges and that is what we claim with this official letter.
Since mister Gabdullin said to the Russian Press that he would refuse to accept our appeal and considering that we feel that Russian judges would be under too much pressure on this case, we have no other choice but to appeal to World MMA Association that is an umbrella organization with Russian MMA union being part of it.
Before finishing I want to say that I truly believe that Russian MMA Judges haven’t done anything to intentionally harm my client. The conflict of interest, to my eyes, is natural when you judge someone who is personally so close to you. That’s why we respectfully ask for another referee team to watch and judge this fight.
Best Regards,
Stefano Sartori
After receiving the letter from Maldonado’s manager, the WMMAA announced via their official website that they will be appointing a group of “objective international judges” to review the fight in its’ entirety once again. They have also announced that Gabdullin has been temporarily suspended from his position. Sartori went out to explain to MMAFighting.com that there is a “good chance” that the official result of the Fedor-Maldonado bout will be overturned.
The full statement that WMMAA released on their official website regarding the situation can be read in full below.
WMMAA received an appeal request from Stefano Sartori who is Brazilian Fabio Maldonado’s manager. In his appeal mister Sartori asks to appoint an independent judges’ commission that would reassess the results of the bout between Fedor Emelianenko and Fabio Maldonado.
Since all the rights belong to the organizing party of the event, Fight Nights promotion, any reassessment would be made possible if triggered by the promotion in question. However, based on the received appeal, WMMAA’s overall responsibility for positive cooperation within sports community and because the whole issue brought up a lot of negative publicity towards judges of Russian MMA Union which is part of WMMAA, the Association is forced to react and assess both the situation occurred as well as the quality of decisions made by its licensed judges.
Accordingly, WMMAA’s president announces the following sequence of actions:
– appoint Secretary General Alexander Engelhardt responsible for handling of the said appeal procedure;
– appoint a group of objective international judges under the guidance of experienced referee / judge in Marco Broersen (the Netherlands); the group is to assess the fight based on the tape and render an unbiased verdict regarding the fight and the judges’ work.
– temporarily suspend WMMAA’s head judge Radmir Gabdullin from his position.
– discuss judges’ work at the next WMMAA Congress taking into account the pending verdict of the independent commission.
H/T to Brazilian MMA reporter Guilherme Cruz and MMAFighting.com