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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief Vitor Belfort has verbally agreed to step into Josh Barnett's place opposite Fedor Emelianenko at next week's Affliction" Trilogy event, according to a report from MMAJunkie.com. The report states that negotiations are under way as to the monetary terms of his contract for this fight.
However, a wrinkle in that is that the California State Athletic Commission has not heard anything from Affliction about the proposed bout to make a determination as to whether they'd sanction the fight, according to a separate report from BloodyElbow.com. Considering Belfort had already been looking at a middleweight bout with Jorge Santiago for this bout, it would be a fight two weight classes up from where he was planning on fighting, and just 10 days out from the event.
Belfort's striking coach, Xtreme Couture's Shawn Tompkins, told MMAJunkie that Belfort was walking at around 205 lbs. at the moment and could add another 5-10 on top of that by next weekend. Still, it's all about money on Belfort's side when it comes to taking this fight, as he's bound to be commanding a near seven figures to match what Fedor's last opponents have been paid. Barnett was reportedly set to make close to what Arlovski took in this January against Emelianenko, which was $1.5 million.
Affliction's expected to make some type of announcement on the fight sometime soon, and the official release from the CSAC is still awaited today.
Penick's Analysis:The more I think about this fight the more it seems Affliction should just not have Fedor fight. It might be time to cut their losses on this one and not have the event if this is what they're going to bring as a replacement fight. They basically have the two most anticipated fights on the card mangled because of this, as Belfort-Santiago would have been a hell of a fight. This is yet another instance where Dana White's going to come out of the weekend with more ammunition against Fedor being the top fighter in the world because of who his competition has been. Belfort's looked good in his last two fights at middleweight, but you can't ignore all the fights he's lost before making that drop to the likes of Randy Couture, Tito Ortiz, Alistair Overeem and Dan Henderson. Sure those were all a few years ago but it's still relevant when he's taking on the man considered the best in the world at heavyweight when he wasn't able to handle the best in the UFC and PRIDE at a lighter weight class.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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