An increasing interest in the MMA community has recently boosted the number of suitors involved in the saga of Fedor Emelianenko. With a recent trip by Fedor's representation to the bargaining table, Vadim Finkelstein, Apy Echteld, and Reed Wallace have become names that the MMA community has learned to know and have been dreaded by some MMA fans. It isn't just fans that are dreading these three names behind the negotiation tale that is being written as I write this. Dana White, President of the UFC, has also stated his distaste for the negotiations with the Russian delegation and Fedor's U.S. representation. A week long trip by Finkelstein and Echteld still could not yield a decision on the future of the PRIDE Heavyweight Champion, and to make matters more complicated, new suitors have joined the hunt. Curtain opens.. welcome Mark Cuban to the show. ¹

Mark Cuban, if you follow sports in general, is the well-known energetic, enthusiastic owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks. This week, Sherdog reported that Cuban was in ongoing discussions with Fedor's representation to bring the "Last Emperor" to the HDNet lineup.² Does Mark Cuban really have a chance at creating an organization? Or does he have a chance at promoting Fedor and luring in fighters to create cards because of one fighter? Let's take a look inside what Mark Cuban can do, and what could possibly be the biggest MMA undertaking for a new entrepeneur in the sport

Cuban's intuition

For those of you not acclimated with the IT industry, Mark Cuban is a huge name that arose in a very hot time in the industry. He was able to go from working as a bartender, to selling a company for $6 million dollars to the Internet giant at the time, CompuServe. CompuServe was a subsidiary of H&R Block. H&R bought MicroSolutions, a company that integrated and resold software such as Lotus Notes, CompuServe Internet Service, and was one of the first companies to sell technologies like the old Carbon Copy paper. Cuban officially netted a little over $2 million from the sale.

But how did he make his reported billions? Do any of you remember Broadcast.com? If you don't, Broadcast.com came about during the dot-com boom. I remember using it a few times to listen to live radio on the Internet at the time, and that was their main product. This was one of the first companies to utilize internet radio. Today, these technologies are known as Yahoo! Launchcast and Platinum. Yahoo! bought the company out, and Cuban netted over $5.9 Billion dollars in Yahoo! stock from the deal.

Of course, with this type of money in his palm, he was able to do extraordinary things that most millionaires couldn't even do. To this date, Cuban has ventures in a number of technology startups, many including web-based search engines, broadcasting tools, web radio, but his primary startup that has been anticipated for years was the acquisition of HD television networks. Cuban owns HDNet, which is HD programming that broadcasts all video in High Definition format for the newer generation of televisions. It is the first high definition satellite network of its kind, and will eventually make Mark Cuban even richer than he already is. If you have digital cable and they offer HDNet, it's the only network of its kind that is offered in the world.

Cuban's other ventures include owning the Dallas Mavericks, bidding to own the Pittsburgh Penguins, Chicago Cubs, and Pittsburgh Pirates. He's also received over a million dollars in fines from the NBA for on court antics such as excessively cursing at the referees, making press conference remarks regarding poor referee performance, and booing campaigns against former players. On the other hand, for every fine he received from the NBA, he matched with a charitable donation to an organization, and even went so far to work at a Dairy Queen in Coppell, Texas when the franchise was offended by a comment he had said stating that Ed T. Rush, the NBA's manager of officials, "couldn't even run a Dairy Queen".²

According to Frank Trigg at TAGGRadio, this isn't Cuban's first MMA venture. He did deal with WEC before it was owned by Zuffa, and was broadcast on HDNet for awhile. Cuban has been involved in MMA for around 4-5 years already, so he does have some type of experience with dealings in the MMA game.⁵

A look inside the Cuban dynasty 

All of these accomplishments and antics are what Mark Cuban brings to the table. He's an enthusiastic billionaire who doesn't mind spending money to bring what the people want to see. Maybe that's what these negotiations need, a kid inside a billionaire's body. But many fans would say that the kid isn't speaking here, it's the business man. Cuban is reportedly looking to sign Fedor Emelianenko to a contract that would bring him to the HDNet fight nights in order to increase viewership. It is still undetermined whether or not Cuban would actually create his own MMA organization or simply promote Fedor to organizations and set up fights to be shown on the HDNet channels. According to Cuban:

"We would work with his promoters to place him in fights from affiliated promoters or in fights we promote ourselves," said Cuban, who plans on partnering with established MMA organizations to fill the weekly quota of bouts HDNet would need for its successful Friday Fight Night series. "It's the highest rated sports programming by far [on HDNet]," Cuban said. "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."

It beats the networks that have five times or more the carriage that they do? I was unable to actually find any proof of that statement. This could be a fairly accurate statement considering SpikeTV runs a good number of shows during the month while HDnet is only featuring a show every Friday night. But what do these fight nights really have that SpikeTV isn't already promoting. From the looks of it, a new show every Friday that isn't a re-run of previous fights. UFC Unleashed definitely is a show dedicated, much like the PRIDE FC show on FSN, to showcasing fighters' resumes. But what would you rather watch as a die-hard MMA fan, new fights or old classics? With the sport growing and more fighters coming into the MMA game, the demand for events is rising. Cuban is certainly positioning himself to take a big step into creating more events for the fans.

Another note about SpikeTV and the UFC is that UFC Fight Night events are very far apart right now. We could potentially see a change in that since more fighters are beginning to cruise into the UFC and the WEC is also growing fairly quickly. For the month of September, SpikeTV will host 2 major MMA events, UFC 75 and a UFC Fight Night, along with the premiere of the Ultimate Fighter reality series and the subsequent episodes that follow. For now, the ratings for Spike will most likely dramatically increase as the year progresses due to the reality show and the events being broadcast for free on the network. This would put to waste the remarks Cuban made.

But what does Friday Fight Night have going for it? Newer fights in smaller organizations? Who cares you say? Interestingly enough, they do show IFO events such as the latest Fireworks in the Cage event featuring Travis Wiuff and Sean Salmon.³ I did find this rather interesting since that event was talked about frequently in the community because it had many UFC veterans on the card that could potentially get the eyes of the giant looking their way for a contract with that event. But what would the addition of someone like Fedor Emelianenko really do? To be honest, I wouldn't buy the HDNet package unless Fedor fought someone like Josh Barnett. HDNet can't clash these two fighters against each other over and over again, and they would need to sign some of the big name heavyweights in MMA to have a legitimate shot at prolonging the high ratings. Add that with the fact that a majority of households do not have HD televisions, and therefore wouldn't be able to really see the events to their full extent. Also, Fedor is not a well-known fighter to the casual MMA fan in the United States. Would a lot more people really tune into HDNet to see him fight? I say yes if it's the die-hard MMA community, but the jump wouldn't be significant enough to pay Fedor a huge salary.

The Changes

Ultimately, I don't think Mark Cuban can pull off signing Fedor to HDNet, but Cuban's proposal throws a huge curveball into the UFC's negotiating power. You now have a billionaire bidding for the services of Fedor against a MMA conglomerate that is swallowing up the industry and creating a huge demand from the fans to sign the best heavyweight in the world. Not only do I think that this will lead to a bit of leniency from the UFC, but I think it will also help Fedor choose the UFC. If the UFC begins to feel threatened by the prospect of the #1 fighter in the world going to a smaller promotion, they may feel the bite of the community to sign him to a multi-fight deal that concedes to at least some of his demands. It'll either be that direction or the UFC will stick to their guns and Fedor could be lost to another organization. To the casual MMA fan, this isn't a big loss. To the die-hard MMA fan who wanted to see a dream matchup such as Randy Couture vs. Fedor Emelianenko, it's a sigh of disappointment. This is all in theory, of course.

With the recent interview at MMAWeekly involving the signing of Fedor to an Affliction clothing deal, it seems imminent that Fedor will be trading glances at UFC events and most likely will be stepping in the Octagon soon.⁴ For the sake of argument however, Mark Cuban does have the money and power to back a deal that could potentially keep Fedor out of the Octagon. It could keep the Russian rich, free to do what he wants, non-exclusive to any organization, and quite possibly is a better position for co-promoting an event with the Russians in St. Petersburg or Moscow. We certainly will see in the coming week.