Fedor versus Arlovski Set For January 24th

Affliction have announced that the Fedor Emelianenko - Andre Arlovski fight will take place on January 24th.

This move comes after Fedor's manager announced that he will not be fighting on New Years Eve as he usually does. This will leave him with plenty of time to prepare for the fight with Arlovski, which is a fight that fans have been anticipating for a long time.

Also named as participants on the card are Josh Barnett, Matt Lindland, Vitor Belfort, Vladimir Matyushenko, Jay Hieron, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Renato "Babalu" Sobral and Chris Horodecki. No match ups have been mentioned as yet.

Fedor To Return At New Year's Eve

Fedor Emelianenko has spoken today about his plans for the rest of this year.

He was supposed to fight Andre Arlovski at the next Affliction event, but has been pulled from this due to injury. Arlovski will instead fight Josh Barnett for the number one contender slot. The winner of this fight will then fight Fedor.

Fedor said today that he wants to fight both fighters, not just the winner. Both of these fights stand to be very exciting and we hope they happen sometime in the near future. They won't happen this year, however.

Fedor's next fight will take place on New Year's Eve in Japan. There have been rumors that he would face Cro Cop, but this will now not happen. His opponent is not yet determined, but is expected to be a Judo legend or a Sumo wrestler. We will bring you more information as we learn it.

UPDATE: Fedor Out, Barnett In

Yesterday we reported that the anticipated fight between Andre Arlovski and Fedor Emelianenko looked liekly to be cancelled.

This has now been cancelled, and a fight between Josh Barnett and Andre Arlovski has been announced. Whilst this fight is not quite on the same level as a Fedor/Arlovski fight, it still has a great deal of pulling power for fans.

The fight will headline the Affliction 2 card, which takes place on October 11th.

RUMOR: Arlovski - Fedor Off Due To Injury

The rumored fight between Andre Arlovski and Fedor Emelianenko looks to be offf the card for October's Affliction 2 card.

Fedor is reportedly suffering from a hand injury which will make it impossible for him to be ready in time for the event. It is not yet known whether Fedor will have surgery to correct the problem.

Affliction are rumored to be trying to secure Josh Barnett to create a Arlovski - Barnett replacement fight.

Affliction Autograph Signing

If you are in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday, you might want to head down the Century City Mall for Affliction's promotional autograph signing.

Fighters booked to be there include Fedor Emelianenko, Tim Sylvia, Fabio Negao, Ben Rothwell, Matt Lindland, Mike Whitehead, Babalu Sobral, Josh Barnett and Pedro Rizzo. Perhaps the most exciting news to fans is that they also list a mystery fighter to appear at the event. Based on this week's rumors, there is a distinct possibility that this fighter could be Andre Arlovski, who is thought to be joining the promotion on the 19th May, if the UFC don't come up with a suitable contract offer.

This event will definately be worth checking out. If I wasn't on a completely different continent, I'd be there along side all you lucky people! As an added incentive, the first 500 people to attend will be given a free Affliction T-shirt. If anyone makes it to this event, please pop here and leave comments to let all us unlucky ones know how it went.

Fedor Returns....On DVD

Fedor Emelianenko fans will be pleased to learn that if they don't want to wait until July to see Fedor in action, they don't have to.

HDNet Fights have released a DVD this week of their New Years Eve Card Fedor Returns/Yarennoka. In this DVD you can see Fedor square off against Hong Man Choi, amongst other great fights. The full card is listed below.

YARENNOKA! FIGHT CARD

-Fedor Emelianenko vs Hong Man Choi

-Shin’ya Aoki vs Bu-Kyung Jung

-Hayato “Mach” Sakurai vs Hidehiko Hasegawa

-Kazuo Misaki vs Yoshihiro Akiyama

-Mitsuhiro Ishida vs Gilbert Melendez

-Makoto Takimoto vs Murilo Bustamante

-Tatsuya Kawajiri vs Luiz Azeredo

-Mike Russow vs Roman Zentsov

Affliction Announce Fights For First Show

New promotion Affliction, run by the clothing company of the same name, has announced some of their fights for their fight card.

Headlining the event will be the now official fight between UFC Veteran Tim Sylvia, and former Pride Heavyweight Champ Fedor Emelianenko. This will be Fedor's first real test since he left Pride.

The co-main event is Josh Barnett versus Pedro Rizzo. While many think of Rizzo as an old fighter past his prime, this is not the case, and will be a tough fight for Barnett, who will be looking to avenge a previous loss to Rizzo.

The event is expected to take place in California on July 19th. The fight card to date looks like this:

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Tim Sylvia
Josh Barnett vs. Pedro Rizzo
Matt Lindland vs. Fabio Negao
Renato Sobral vs. Mike Whitehead
Aleksander Emelianenko vs. Paul Buentello (not yet official)
Ben Rothwell vs. TBA
Mark Hominick vs. Savant Young
Justin Levens vs. Ray Lazama
Mike Pyle vs. Brett Cooper
J.J. Ambrose vs. Patrick Speight