The official site of M-1 has published a video of their new project called Fighting Fedor, which will be a reality show where 16 fighters will be flown to Saint-Petersburg to train in the Red Devil Sports Club and fight each other. The winner will get a chance to face Fedor Emelianenko. Here is the video.
It is a good idea. Sort of...
It's definitely a good thing from the promotion and marketing perspective. Thus people will see the fighters as well as Fedor (he will be undoubtedly hyped all the way during the show). It will make viewers sympathize fighters and will draw a lot of attention.
Well, "a lot of attention" in case they make it to a decent TV channel. It might of course be HDNet, which isn't a bad thing (it's better than nothing, right), but it's better be some bigger channel. Now the moment of truth comes in. M-1 Global was talking months ago about a good TV deal. They actually promised to tell more information about it a few weeks after the press-conference, which was in late October! They haven't told us anything, which on one hand can suggest about the problems and on another, about the will to make an announcement at a right time. With this new Fighting Fedor MMA reality show, it's time to make an announcement. It's now or never.
Will M-1 Global be able to pull off the contract with some huge American TV channel like HBO, ESPN or NBC/FOX/etc? Were they right in their predictions to get an excellent TV deal and were wrong only about the timing? Or were their hopes and predictions completely wrong and they are just a bunch of optimistic losers, who wish a lot without actually achieving much? We will know pretty soon...
Another question is, when will this show be aired? I might be wrong with this, but looking at the video footage, it makes me think that this whole show is already being shot (at least a part of it). But if there are indeed 16 good fighters in the show, and taking to the account the amount of other people involved (family, friends, trainers, shooting and organization team) it's pretty amazing that we haven't heard anything about this show before. I think there are only two explanations. One being - the show isn't shot yet. Another - there aren't any good top fighters involved. I mean the fighters who would have steady and sizeable fan base and whose doings are interesting to other people to hear.
If the latter is true, then there is little sense in the whole show from the fans and MMA sports perspective. It doesn't make any good to see Fedor destroying some heavyweight newbie. Granted, there can be some great guy with a good and solid MMA record, who will improve during the training and will prove to everybody that he is much better than what people used to think. But it still doesn't make him close enough to the skill set of Fedor.
The final big question is when will the final fight against Fedor be? Is it possible that is will already be on the first M-1 Global show in Chicago in April/May? If (big if!) they are already shooting the show, it might be possible. This would at least explain why the M-1 Global's first real show has been postponed a few times already.
As you can see, this show is a great idea from the marketing perspective, but we can't be sure about the advantages and disadvantages from the view of MMA community until we hear more details. I guess we will soon find out.
Or maybe I'm just being too analytical and we will see fighters like Ben Rothwell and Jeff Monson competing to get a chance to fight Fedor Emelianenko. Not likely to happen, but who knows!.. :)
2 comments:
guess this show was legit. I don't think this will go over well at all in the MMA community. People's criticism that Fedor hasn't fought anyone since Mirko will grow louder. It just doesn't seem like a good idea at all
As I said, everything depends on the level of fighters and the real details (commercial vs reality).
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