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Wanderlei Silva stopped by the Affliction training facility to get a little work in with his longtime coach Rafael Cordeiro and rough Tom Atencio up a bit.

Affliction has officially responded to the lawsuit M-1 Global and Fedor Emelianenko filed against them last week. They’ve filed a motion to dismiss essentially claiming M-1 has no grounds to sue them. Affliction’s Tom Atencio fired back with this money quote.

“Affliction landed a serious blow to the Fedor and M-1 lawsuit by filing a motion to dismiss in federal court in response to the Russians’ complaint only eight days after being served. . . . The counter by Affliction goes to show Affliction does not intend to rollover and be extorted by the Russian visitors and how frivolous and meritless Affliction considers the allegations of their complaint.”

It does however on the surface seem like M-1’s complaint has merit. M-1 contends Affliction breached their contract with Fedor by making a deal behind their backs with the UFC to escape the fight promotion business instead of securing a replacement opponent for Fedor.

But there’s a twist. Affliction says their contract with Fedor expired on March 31, 2009.

But then we come to Affliction’s motion to dismiss, which throws a monkey wrench into the entire substantive analysis. You see, Fedor argues that Affliction breached its contracts by cancelling Affliction: Trilogy and reaching agreement with UFC in July 2009.

Affliction’s motion to dismiss, however, points to the language of the contracts, which calls for termination of the agreements on either (i) March 31, 2009; or (ii) the conclusion of the third fight, with the contracts specifically stating that they terminate upon the earlier of the two dates. Since there was no third fight, the earlier date was March 31, 2009, and Affliction argues in its motion to dismiss that it cannot be alleged to have breached a contract in July 2009 that had expired four months earlier.

Boom! Affliction lands the knockout punch, right? Well, unfortunately it’s not that simple and this is the point where the dispute starts moving into gray territory. Payout explains it much better than my legally challenged mind can, so I recommend checking out their full report on this latest development.

Update: Bloody Elbow has more details on the motion to dismiss including information on what Affliction paid Fedor and M-1 for each of his fights, $300,000 and $1.2 million, respectively.

“Let me put everything to rest here — the Fedor deal is entirely manageable, it will be very, very workable for everyone including Fedor. He is very well taken care of, but it’s a very responsible deal — no one’s going out of business because of it. It’s all silliness, and I’ll tell you, if the UFC is good at anything, they are good at spreading a lot of nonsense.”

—Showtime Sports head Ken Hershman, via Sherdog, responding to all the talk that Fedor & M-1 will put their partner, Strikeforce, out of business.

If anybody in the US knows what it’s like to deal with M-1, it’s Tom Atencio. He had a working relationship with Vadim Finkelstein & Co. for over a year, and even though that partnership is over, he still has nothing bad to say about them.

“I had a great relationship with them,” Atencio said about M-1. “One of the things I always said is I would co-promote and the UFC doesn’t co-promote and they have what they do, and it works for them.

“I’ve always said I don’t blame the UFC for doing what they do. They don’t really need anybody else, and that’s what Dana said. They’re not going to co-promote because he doesn’t need them and that’s 100-percent true. The bottom line is it worked out for Strikeforce and Vadim is still co-promoting his brand, M-1.”

Bottom line is most people are going to remain skeptical about M-1 and this arrangement unless positive results prove otherwise regardless of what Strikeforce, Showtime or M-1 says. All the parties involved say this is a good deal, so I suppose I’ll take their word for it, but if things start going south, I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised.

Image via Sherdog

Tom & Dana: BFF's once again

It’s official. After a year and a half of separation the UFC and Affliction have fallen back in love. It’s hard to imagine they ever made it back to this point. After all, not too long ago Tom Atencio was publicly challenging Dana White to a fight while Dana was calling Tom a “loser” and saying things like “I hope you idiots stay in business…stay around in 2010 and burn every dollar you have.”

It was a rough time, things were said, but in a matter of hours they were able to make up and put that all behind them. Forgiven and forgotten.

“We are excited about the return of Affliction to the UFC and look forward to seeing our fighters once again walk into the octagon wearing the Affliction brands,” UFC president Dana White stated. “Affliction is an innovator of mixing fashion with this sport, and we are looking forward to working together to promote the sport.”

“Our brand is synonymous with the ‘Live Fast’ approach to life, and UFC is the perfect venue for us to market our brand,” Affliction co-founder Eric Foss stated. “We have come to an agreement with the UFC, which we feel will be the best for the sport and will help the UFC continue delivering the highest caliber of fights.”

(Sigh) Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

“It doesn’t phase me what [Dana White] says. [The UFC] can talk, but I just don’t see it happening, personally. But if it does, then perfect. As a fan, that’s something that I would love to see…[Contract negotiations with Fedor] are going, they’re good. We’ve almost finalized it, but we just haven’t signed the papers. That’s really where we’re at. Everything is moving forward, it has nothing to do with anything but the fact that we’re just trying to make everybody happy, as I always do. We have a great relationship with [M-1] and we’re always going to continue on with that, and that’s why I’m not too worried about things…[Fedor's representatives] always tell us what’s going on. We’re partners and that’s what you have to do in a partnership. They’ve talked to the UFC in the past, we’ve talked to the UFC in the past. The UFC does not co-promote. The UFC doesn’t want to work with other people and that’s really what it comes down to. That’s why I am confident that I don’t see it happening. But, if it happens, I think it’s great. I want to see fighters fight the best in the world.”

—Tom Atencio, via FightLine.com, responding to Dana White’s latest proclamation about signing Fedor Emelianenko

I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but honestly, unless Affliction calls it a day after “Trilogy,” I fully expect Fedor to re-sign with Affliction. If they can’t, they might as well close up shop anyways since their promotion is basically built around him. As much as we’d all love to see Fedor in the UFC, and think the stars may finally be aligning, let’s not forget that Fedor doesn’t give a damn whether he ever steps foot in the Octagon. For it to happen (if Affliction doesn’t fold), Lorenzo’s going to have to make another “can’t refuse” offer, and I’m afraid to M-1 that’s a little bit more than large sums of money.

Hopefully, I’m wrong, but speaking of Lorenzo, he made a few comments about Fedor this past weekend too.

“Right now, Fedor’s completely irrelevant to the public. His pay-per-view numbers have been 12,000, 30,000, and now Affliction is saying he’ll get 100,000 [against Josh Barnett]. I’ll take the under-70,000. We average 500,000 buys and we expect 1 million for this one…Fedor wants to use UFC for a fight to be relevant, and then leave and do his own thing. That’s not our business model…We spend more money for marketing than anyone has ever spent on Fedor. If I bring in Fedor, we’ll make him the most recognizable face in MMA, but we also want to recoup on our investment. You wouldn’t sign Tom Brady for one game. So why do I want to sign this guy for one fight?”

To make us fans happy Lorenzo, to make us, your fans, freakin’ happy. That’s why.

In this week’s edition of Fox Fight Game, Mike Straka and co. talk about the championship fights at UFC 100, Sapp-Lashley, Tom Atencio’s fight, and discuss whether Affliction “Trilogy” is Affliction’s last event.

HT: MMACube

Round two after the jump.

Ultimate Chaos went down earlier this evening in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Sorry, but I missed the fights (saw Transformers 2, which was freakin’ awesome, hilarious, and had Megan Fox <– good god, knuckle-biting hot), so I can’t really tell you a whole lot about what happened. But from the recaps I’ve read, Bobby Lashley immediately took Bob Sapp down and pounded on him until he tapped (no word if he cried), the ref in the Yvel-Rizzo fight stood there and watched Yvel pound Rizzo into unconsciousness (read: criminally late stoppage), Chris Horodecki easily choked out his opponent, and Tom Atencio (!) weathered a beating in the first round to give Randy Hedderick one so bad in the second he refused to answer the bell in the third.

Steve Cofield has a lot more over at Cagewriter.com.

Full results after the jump.