Fedor's Manager Talks About MMA Return And Relationship With UFC, UFC Rankings Movement

- Fedor Emelianenko is currently the hottest free agent on the MMA market, even three years after his last fight. Fedor's longtime manager Vadim Finkelchtein says many things have changed since Fedor last fought, and there is no ill-will from their side regarding previous conversations. Vadim spoke to Submission Radio about the situation this week.

"Dana talked a lot. [He] talked a lot about Fedor, about Vadim, and he talked bad," he said. "But Fedor understands that it all was just PR. He's not in a bad relations with Dana and he doesn't feel anything bad about him," he said.

Another major hangup between the UFC and Fedor in previous negotiations was that he was under contract to M-1 Global. M-1 mandated that shows Fedor appeared on would have to be co-promoted, something that has changed.

"Well, when it comes to M-1 we are not really interested in any kind of co-promotion. M-1 is a self-contained, European promotion which has no less than 12 shows a year, and this number is about to grow every year. I don't think that a co-promotion with Bellator is possible. The other time when we co-promoted with Strikeforce [it was] because Fedor had a contract with M-1. Now it's a different story. And, well to repeat what I said before, I want to say that M-1 don't really need any co-promotion," Finkelchtein said.

- UFC's two events in the past week caused some minor shakeups in the company's official rankings, ahead of the back to back weeks that will see championship fights.

Holly Holm improved one spot to #9 in the Women's Bantamweight division, while Michelle Waterson cracked the top 10 in the Women's Strawweight division. Neil Magny, who is booked in two weeks at UFC 190 also improved two spots, up to #12 in the Welterweight division. Tony Ferguson ended up at #9, swapping spots with opponent Josh Thomson, who fell to #11.