Fedor a UFC y Hughes vs Shogun

April 1st, 2008

First off, I wanted to wish Tommy good luck for his fight tomorrow night. He’s got some photos from when he was training at the gym posted on his website. So, if you haven’t seen those yet, you can check them out at tommyspeer.com.

Well, for a long time I’ve talked about going up in weight class and I’ve decided to finally do it. Only I’m not going up to 185, I’m going up to 205 to fight Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in June. I’m bulking up now and packing on muscle and I’m thinking that it will be nice to not have to cut weight for a change. I think it’s a great match-up for me and I’ve told Dana that if I win this, then I want a shot at the 205 title next.

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.