New MMA Organization Cage Fighting Championships, Inc. (CFC) Offers $3 Million Purse for Randy Couture VS Fedor Emelianenko
DAVIE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Cage Fighting Championships (CFC) Spokesperson Crawford Grimsley announced today, “The CFC will put up a $3,000,000 purse to bring the Couture vs Emelianenko fight to Pay-Per-View. $1,000,000 will be guaranteed to each fighter while the winner takes home an additional cool million, making this the largest single purse for any one MMA fight.”
Grimsley, a former heavyweight boxer who went 12 rounds with big George Foreman for the world title in 1996 said, “I don’t know who set up the current MMA system of sanctioning bodies locking fighters into exclusive long term contracts. I do know who is out to change this system though, we are, the CFC. We are not going to try to reinvent the wheel, but we would like to add a little of the business model that professional boxing has adopted for decades. Can you imagine if professional boxing would not allow champion to fight champion. How many great boxing matches would we have missed?”
Grimsley added, “The UFC has made this sport into what it is today and my hat is off to them, but in the same regard, we feel the sport must allow the best from any league to fight each other when the time is right. We are willing to sit down with any and all parties necessary to make this fight happen including the UFC, Randy Couture, the Gersh Agency, Fedor Emelianenko, his manager Vadim Finkelstein and M-1. It happens everyday in boxing. That’s how you get an undisputed champion. This exclusivity only hurts the sport, the fans, the fighters and the amount of money a fighter can make. We are going to do everything we can to bring this fight and many others currently prohibited. It’s time for the MMA to change for the benefit of the fighters and fans, not the sanctioning bodies.”
The first CFC event took place October 6, 2007 and has already hit the radar of Mark Cuban’s HDNet Network, which only broadcasts in 1080i High Definition, and the hit show Inside MMA. Highlights of the first CFC Middleweight Title fight “Let the Rage Begin” aired this last Friday, October 12, 2007. For airing information, go to
http://www.hd.net and look for the Inside MMA schedule.
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This has actually been a long time coming. Zuffa's wish to bring MMA main stream will ultimatly lead to their undoing. For those of you who have wondered why companies Like HBO, SHoWTime, and ESPN, have been a long time in accepting MMA, they have been playing a waiting game. Zuffa has laid the ground work and establish a market for MMA. I would not be surprised to see a swift ascension of EliteXC and other organizations as the push to develop this establish market reaches maximum velocity. I expect the UFC to be pushed aside in the coming years. It's rain as the Top organization will give way to better funded professionally managed companies. Zuffa's has been riding high as the big dog in the US for one reason. They had the most financing. The UFC left to rely on it's management to compete with other well funded organizations will crumble. We are beginning to see the migration of fighters away from the UFC already. There will alway be a UFC, but not as we have known it in the past. What we know about MMA will be changed in the next 2 years.
