Press-conference in Japan. Fedor's fight against Hong Man Choi. Sherdog's fuckup.

Sherdog.com has news about the press-conference I previously reported.

M-1 Global and former members of Dream Stage Entertainment announced Wednesday in Tokyo that they will collaborate on a New Year's Eve event at Saitama Super Arena.

Among the representatives present at the news conference, which was held at the arena, were M-1 Global executive committee member and M-1 Mix Fight president Vadim Finkelstein, PRIDE heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko, former PRIDE president Nobuhiko Takada, PRIDE's former public relations representative Keiichi Sasahara, DEEP boss and former Bushido matchmaker Shigeru Saeki, former PRIDE MC's Kei Grant and Lenne Hardt as well as Daisuke Sato, the man behind the production for the company.

The large group of former and current power brokers of the Japanese MMA market announced a joint venture for Dec. 31 that will have Emelianenko fight in the main event against Korean kickboxer Hong Man Choi.

Other possible participants named were former Bushido aces Hayato Sakurai, Shinya Aoki, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Mitsuhiro Ishida and Kazuo Misaki. Top foreign free agents mentioned were Joachim Hansen, Ricardo Arona, Gilbert Melendez and Luiz Azeredo. M-1 also brought up Russian heavyweights Aleksander Emelianenko and Roman Zentsov.

Although the event will not be available on Japanese cable TV, SkyPerfecTV has agreed to carry the show on pay-per-view.

© unknown Fedor Emelianenko and other fighters at the press-conference in Japan's Saitama Super Arena

Unfortunately the former Pride fighter Ricardo Arona won't be attending this show. He told about it in the interview made to GracieMag.com.

When queried about M-1 Global and Fedor, the athlete [Ricardo Arona] responded: “M-1 Global hunted me down to fight at the end of this year, but I’m having some personal problems and will not be able to go. They also offered me a fight in February and there is a great possibility of that. As for Fedor, nobody’s said anything about that to me; I’d be stoked to fight him, I think weight will not be a problem, he can either drop a bit or I’ll go up.”

So all this is official information. What about the unofficial (from the M-1 camp) one? Here you go: do you see Sherdog't sentence about the sure Fedor Emelianenko vs Hong Man Choi fight? That's bullshit! Don't trust this information!

The thing is that according to the contract, the receiving side can choose the opponent for Fedor Emelianenko. Hong Man Choi is only one of the candidates, even though a very good one. But nothing is 100% sure yet.

Hong Man Choi has been already training to fight Fedor. Actually, Asian promoters already approached Fedor Emelianenko and his management this summer with the proposal to fight Hong Man Choi, but it didn't work out because of the Fedor's negotiations with the UFC at a time.

People at the M-1 camp are angry for Sherdog for publishing this kind of rumours. By doing this they:

• Increased the chance for negotiations to break up
  
• Increased the monetary demands of the parties (Hong Man Choi, K-1?)
  
• Increased the chance of this fight not to come true
  
• Increased their own chances of being blamed for giving incorrect information (like I do now and like many people will do if Fedor will be fighting somebody else)

Now who knows where this leaked information will lead...

And now my personal opinion. I don't understand people, who call Hong Man Choi "a bag". He is not. Well, at least we don't know it yet. He is one of the top K-1 fighters in the world. Can we look at his fighting record and decide if he will be a good match up for Fedor Emelianenko? No. We can't really draw any conclusions from his only MMA win. Can we say anything about the success of people coming from the kickboxing/K-1 background and their results in MMA? No. On one hand we have such people as Mirko CroCop and Igor Vovchanchin, who were very successful. On another, we have Semmy Schilt, who wasn't that good at MMA.

What can we say about Hong Man Choi? He is young, he is tall and strong. He is successful in K-1. His background is in Korean style of wrestling (sumo-like), which should be only to advantage in Mixed Martial Arts. He has been training a lot in MMA.

Does it mean he will be successful? No. It only means that anything can happen. Obviously, Fedor Emelianenko will lose, sooner or later. Maybe Hong Man will be that guy? He might, even though I personally am doubtful. What is not doubtful, is that if Fedor Emelianenko and Hong Man Choi will fight, it will be a fight of perhaps two biggest stars in Asian fighting scene, and it makes a lot of sense for M-1 Global from the marketing and business perspective.

Let's wait and see what happens! If we will see this fight at all...