M-1's Breakthrough and Strikeforce's Cyborg vs. Carano Events May Benefit From Affliction Cancellation

MMAWeekly is reporting that M-1 Global's August 28th event in Los Angeles and Strikeforce's August 15th event card may benefit from the sudden cancellation of Affliction's Trilogy event set for August 1st:

One event that is perhaps more likely than others to gain from the cancellation is M-1 Global’s Aug. 28 event in Los Angeles. Several sources indicated that event is a primary focus for placing undercard bouts. Although the talks are still preliminary, M-1 Global’s event would make sense given that the company is a main partner of Affliction and was co-promoting the Aug. 1 "Trilogy" event.

Affliction has also worked closely with Strikeforce, sharing fighters with the California-based promotion in the past. Strikeforce has an Aug. 15 event on Showtime featuring a women’s title bout between Gina Carano and Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos. That event has also suffered recent setbacks with the withdrawal of heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem in a title bout against Fabricio Werdum and, Friday morning, Joe Riggs dropped out of a scheduled welterweight championship fight against Nick Diaz.

Given the strong relationship between the two promotions, it wouldn’t be out of the question for Affliction to try and place some of its fighters on the Strikeforce card to try and fill in some of the gaps.

In an interesting twist of events, Strikeforce and M-1 could benefit greatly from the cancellation. Fabricio Werdum is currently looking for a heavyweight match-up, and Nick Diaz is also needing an opponent for the Strikeforce card on the 15th. M-1's card could use some star power as only Don Frye vs. "King Mo" Lawal is scheduled as one of the biggest fights on the card.

This is definitely an exciting prospect considering the massive disappointment that the cancellation has given fans. Renato "Babalu" Sobral vs. Gegard Mousasi, Vitor Belfort vs. Jorge Santiago, and even Takanori Gomi vs. Rafael Oliveira were battles that many fans were looking forward to watching next weekend. Paul Daley vs. Jay Hieron was also a fight that some fans wanted to see, although our own Luke Thomas has hinted that visa issues may have already caused that match-up to have been cancelled.

Hopefully, Affliction can make some of these match-ups happen on the forementioned cards. That'll save us from waiting for these match-ups to happen down the road, and give some of Affliction's partners some much needed luster for their events. The most interesting announcements will be for Nick Diaz and Fabricio Werdum.

UPDATE: Kevin Iole suggests a Strikeforce-Affliction merger is happening:

Affliction itself is fighting simply for survival. Several sources have said that Affliction and Strikeforce will have some type of merger with Strikeforce retaining its name. Affliction’s Tom Atencio denied any merger is imminent, and Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker is in Italy on vacation and couldn’t be reached for comment

However, two independent sources told Yahoo! Sports a deal is either completed or on the verge of completion.

This would definitely give Strikeforce the ability to make these fights happen on their card. I'm wondering if they'd lend some of these fights to M-1's Breakthrough event though.