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This past October, the Sibling Entertainment Group held a lavish press conference at the Ecko building in New York City to announce that it had not only signed Fedor Emelianenko to an exclusive contract but that it had also acquired the fight promotion M-1. M-1 had been an Eastern European MMA promotion owned by Fedor's manager, Vadim Finkelstein, but was re-branded as M-1 Global under Sibling's ownership and vision of a major presence in the U.S.
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The announcement took the MMA industry by storm and generated a great deal of excitement from hardcore MMA fans. If nothing else, M-1 Global presented the prospect of yet another viable alternative for the MMA fan and a platform that offered the potential to finally make Fedor a star in America.
Fedor, the final reigning heavyweight champion in PRIDE, is considered by many pundits to be the No. 1 mixed martial artist in the world. But most typical casual MMA fans have never even seen him fight.
Unfortunately, the initial excitement generated by Fedor's signing would soon turn to confusion after a potential December debut for the promotion failed to take place. Soon after, Fedor represented M-1 Global in a match against 7-foot-2 kickboxer Hong-Man Choi on a card that took place in Japan under a different promotional banner. At that point, confusion had turned to frustration as fans were without concrete news regarding an official debut for M-1 Global.
Much of the frustration is believed to be derived from internal communication problems between M-1 Global's management and Emelianenko's. Finkelstein continues to operate a promotion in Russia and Europe called "M-1 Mixfight." By using the M-1 moniker and operating a website that at times could be construed as the official mouthpiece for the company, fans have been left wondering about M-1 Global's true identity and direction.
CBSSports.com requested an interview with M-1 Global CEO Monte Cox to help gain some clarity in regard to the state of the promotion.
CBSSports.com: Can you provide a quick update on the general status of M-1 Global?
Monte Cox: We've spent the last five months trying to figure out the best way for us break into the U.S. market and still keep a presence worldwide. And it's taken a lot of time to work out exactly who is responsible for what and who is in charge of what. The good news is that I think this week we've had a breakthrough and it looks like we're finally all getting on the same page.
Q: There have been some rumors going around that Fedor Emelianenko's management was shopping him around to other promotions. There have also been rumors that the relationship between Fedor's management and M-1 Global was not going very well. At any point during recent discussions, was the possibility of severing ties with Fedor ever discussed?
MC: I think in the last five months we've looked at every scenario possible. We've looked at continuing without Fedor and I'm sure Fedor has looked at working with somebody else. It's been a difficult five months but like (M-1 Chairman) Mitchell Maxwell says, anything worth doing takes time. And there's difficulty involved in that and that's what I think is happening here. I think it would have been easy to just say let's go out and do a show and then figure it out. And all of us involved said "No, no, no."
When we go out and do a show we're going to have all of our ducks in a row. We're going to have complete agreement as to how we're doing something at that date and time. The language barrier is something that definitely adds to the time. All documents have to be translated into Russian, and that's not easy. Then it goes back after a few changes and it gets translated and then we re-change it. So it's really been a lot more difficult than I expected but we had a breakthrough this week and I think we're getting close.
Q: There's been a lot of confusion as to exactly what M-1 Global is and precisely what was acquired by its parent company, Sibling Entertainment Group. Part of that confusion has been the website M1Mixfight.com and some of the information that has been disseminated to the public from there. Can you address some of the confusion that exists?
MC: M-1 Global is a subsidiary of Sibling Sports. So M-1 Global is owned by Sibling (and) part of M-1 Global is the fighting services of Fedor. The M-1 Mixfight website belongs to Vadim. As M-1 Global, we don't have any control over those things. Certainly the website has caused some problems. I think all of this has been addressed in our discussions this week and I think we're starting to get a better handle on how our M-1 Global information is going to be released. I hope that our trouble with that website is behind us.
