Thursday, September 01, 2011

Chute Boxe owner claims Cris Cyborg is "highest paid"

I guess it was six weeks ago that Chute Boxe owner Rudimar Fedrigo revealed that Strikeforce champ Cris Cyborg had agreed to terms with Zuffa. Cris confirmed this a few days later. The actual contract was signed last week. I don't know if Cris has representation in the US. But it's not unusual for foreign fighters to have home country representation handle major contract negotiations. Fedrigo is someone she has trusted for years. And there's no language barrier. Of course Strikeforce refused to acknowledge that she agreed to terms. They could have done that and said the contract hadn't been signed yet. But they never do that. Was money the issue? Nope. There was no urgency to sign Cris because they had no opponents for her. They still don't. Matchmaker Sean Shelby is beating the bushes trying to find one. Maybe he should try YouTube again. But when her contract ended, it wasn't long before Cris got an offer from this new company One FC in Singapore. That's the urgency Zuffa needed to make the deal happen. Today Fedrigo told Tatame that he is very happy that after a year of negotiations, they got what they wanted. Cris is supposed to fight in November. But as I said, they're having trouble finding an opponent. Fedrigo also said " Besides being a champion, Cris is the highest paid athlete in the world". Yeah, I know. I'm not buying that either. It did make me laugh. He also said it is a four fight contract. There is still concern about what Zuffa will do with Strikeforce and women's MMA. I don't care what Dana White says. He admitted months ago that anything regarding Strikeforce is Lorenzo Fertitta's decision. Lorenzo is currently talking to Showtime about extending the TV contract. I don't believe Lorenzo spent $40M on his main competition just to kill them and invite someone else to fill that void. Because that will happen. That would be deja vu all over again. There are already rumours that ProElite is talking to Showtime. Though ProElite president T. Jay Thompson denied this, the scuttlebutt is their parent company sent out feelers to gauge interest.

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