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Home » News

Fedor Agrees to Terms on Contract with UFC [April Fools]

Submitted by Dr J on April 1, 2008 – 8:36 am48 Comments
danafedor.jpg

After spending more than 5 months trying unsuccessfully to sign prized free agent Fedor Emelianenko to a UFC contract in 2007, it appears that 2008 is bringing Zuffa better luck.

According to UFC President Dana White, Zuffa and Emelianenko have agreed in principal to the terms of a new two-year, five-fight contract. As can be expected, Zuffa did not discuss the financial terms of the agreement.

“Late last night we came to a verbal agreement on the terms of a contract with Fedor and his managers”, said Dana White. “We are expecting Fedor to arrive in the US later this week to officially sign the contract.”

Last week, M-1 Global (now Adrenaline MMA) announced that Fedor was no longer under contract with their promotion and was once again the most sought after free agent on the market.

The assumption for many months has been that Fedor and former UFC Heavyweight champion Randy Couture would fight sometime this fall after Couture’s UFC contract expired. That fight was expected to most likely take place in Mark Cuban’s HDNet Fights promotion. Randy has recently stated that he would never again fight in the UFC, but with the signing of Fedor, could we see him back in the octagon?

Even though they knew he would refuse, the UFC offered Randy a title fight with Antonio Nogueria a few months ago, and Dana White has said they would be open to offering him other fights in the future.

It will be interesting to see the details of the new contract, specifically if the UFC backed off their stance on Fedor fighting in combat Sambo for his native Russia.

** UPDATE **

For those of you goons who haven’t figured it out yet, this was just an April Fool’s Day joke. Apparently it was a very good one though, and the site has had 6x the normal daily traffic. I figured the “April Fools” tag would give it away, but apparently not.

So thanks to all you who “believed” the story and linked to it. Especially all you Sherdog trolls who made about a dozen different threads about it. You guys made me some nice coin today. Hahaha.

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