Props: Sherdog.com
Quoteworthy [from Cuban]:
"I am in ongoing discussions with some of his people. I plan on making a significant investment in MMA with the goal of promoting it as a professional sport with professional athletes. There is no reason that a fighter in an undercard match should be treated any differently than how I treat our players on the Mavs. We would work with his promoters to place him in fights from affiliated promoters or in fights we promote ourselves. It's the highest rated sports programming by far [on HDNet]. Our MMA programming on HDNet beats networks that have five times or more the carriage that we do. So it's been a big winner for us and we expect it to get even better."
-- This situation continues to get even more bizarre. The billionaire owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, has now thrown is hat into the ring for the services of PRIDE FC Heavyweight Champion, Fedor Emelianenko. He would like to include the Russian "to fill the weekly quota of bouts HDNet would need for its successful Friday Fight Night series." Ugh.
Get the latest gear
