I’m sure this will encourage future business partners to co promote with M-1.

I don’t know if there is any truth to these allegations since I haven’t read them (and probably won’t since I’m lazy). But I think the timing is curious. It seems a great way to generate a lot more interest in their card, especially if they insinuate some sort of malicious intent by the UFC. Suddenly a good mma card becomes something more than just a sports story. Now it is the story of the upstarts versus and the tyrannical UFC. If they can get Dana White to blow up on this, I think I may have to rate this as a smart idea.

I’d believe them suing Josh Barnett for messing up the big money they were going to receive from the Fedor-Barnett fight. This is just ridiculous.

Switching from Barnett to Rogers, even if the event had indeed happened, would have killed Affliction as a fight promoter anyway. There was no way it would have been the draw the original matchup was going to be. This is grasping at straws and trying to squeeze some money out of a business venture gone to smithereens.

Somebody should sit down with Finkelstein & co and explain some things to them.

You know your current partners M-1? I’m not sure what is true and what’s not but last we went through this people were saying Showtime didnt think they had enough time to promote the fight properly?

I also remember that they were talking a Strikeforce/Affliction merger where Strikeforce would handle the mma side and Affliction would do the clothing line but than Coker was out of the country and Affliction wanted out right away so they went with the UFC instead of waiting for Scott Coker to get back from vacation.

Drama bomb.

I wonder how this will all play out. I doubt Affliction Entertainment actually has any money to pay off in a lawsuit, but also suing Affliction Clothing and the “unnamed John Does” makes it interesting.

I don’t know if the UFC will ever get attached to this thing, but that will definitely cause a lot of fireworks.

Did Showtime play any role in the cancellation of Trilogy? If they did, will M-1 go after their “current partners” or will they just STFU?

I dont think M-1 Global really cares about the fact that Affliction got canceled they are pissed that they lost a lot of money.

Just like the people that say Fedor is not in the UFC because Dana badmouths him.

 Dana could call Fedor a fat, crazy, russian all he wants if he was willing to co-promote and hand over 50% of the profits of any show Fedor is on.

I hope M-1 goes to hell. Affliction did a lot for Fedor here in the U.S., hyping him up as much as they could.

Coker has to be shitting his pants now since they are partners with M-1 and M-1 is getting the UFC involved. Watch Dana now throw big money at Strikeforce fighters when their contracts are up.

The term ‘John Does’ in a complaint doesnt actually allude to any specific people, it just means that they reserve the right to add further names to the list at a later date. I work at a civil law firm in California and every case we file has John Does just in case someone else comes up after we’ve filed the initial complaint.

What jurisdiction is this in? It’s probably federal as Affliction is a CA corp and M-1 is Russian, but was in filed in CA?

Uh, what;s with all the anti-M1 comments? I understand them in general, but not in relation to this specific story? How does this paint them in a bad light particularly? It seems like they MAY have a legitimate complaint.

here’s the thing, negotiations between the UFC and Affliction happened in Oct 2008 and were made public, this would possibly protect Zuffa if any claims were made against them aas they could say that negotiations were previously revealed

Some people are foolish to think that if Zuffa is named in this suit that they can just “throw millions of dollars at it” and win. The tobacco companies had an “army of lawyers” and they still paid out billions. People think Dana and company are unstoppable and above the law. They’re not.

1) I would LOVE to see M-1 try to sue the UFC.

2) The more M-1 pulls these douchebag stunts, the more it reflects negatively on Fedor. Look, you can be the nicest guy in school, the workplace, etc., but if all of your friends are jackasses, there’s probably a reason for that.

This sounds like a nice way for 100 lawyers to rack up millions in legal fees and most likely bleed Fedor, er I mean M-1 dry. I doubt this has legs.

The complaint sheds a lot of light on why UFC and M-1 can’t make a deal. Endless side consulting deals and payments that are obviously direct payments to M-1 made under the guise of consulting deals.

Rarely do we get to see how deals are cut in MMA. Its seems as though we only get details via lawsuits; Randy’s, Vera’s with his manager (2 handwritten post-it note with 2-3 numbers constituted a contract offer from Zuffa in that case), this one, etc..

I have no clue how much Affliction screwed M-1, if at all. Nor can I lay claim to know who is in the wrong on the M-1/Golden Glory feud, but I sure as hell do understand Zuffa’s no co-promotions, at least not with M-1 decision. They are simply not good business partners, outside of Fedor they bring nothing but headaches.

The problem for Affliction is they always presented themselves as partners with M-1 Global. Signing a partnership agreement is legally different than signing a service agreement. You can blow off a service agreement if the terms give you the power. In a partnership agreement one party cannot purse a venture that benefits themselves and is a detriment to the other parties . . . that’s why it’s legally titled a partnership.

If Affliction and M-1 Global signed a partnership agreement than I’d say Affliction is fighting a huge up hill battle. Canceling a joined event while selling your share of the assets when the other party is unaware and on a plane half away across the world isn’t going to sit well in any court. Certainly appears Affliction wasn’t upholding the standards of a partnership. It would be up to Affliction to prove that the partnership was already dissolved before M-1 Global set foot on that plane to go to the event.

If UFC is listed on the suit it’s just because that is what lawyers do. It takes no effort to write someone off a lawsuit, but it’s difficult to add one later. The loop hole is “50 John Does”, basically means they will fill in the name later if they can find something on someone that will stick.

Disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer but familiar with partnership agreements.

I feel bad for Affliction: They lost millions in the two cards they did run and are now being sued for the card they did not do.

Even if they had gone through with it, they would have lost millions more.