Bellator President Scott Coker was no fan of doing co-promotion with M-1 Global during his days with Strikeforce.
When Coker signed mixed martial arts (MMA) legend Fedor Emelianenko to Strikeforce, he had to also do business with M-1 Global. That was part of the deal to bring “The Last Emperor” to the promotion.
Those days are over as Coker was able to bring Emelianenko to Bellator in less than an hour. Coker recently appeared on Luke Thomas’ SiriusXM Rush radio show and admitted that he and M-1 Global President Vadim Finkelstein didn’t always agree on things:
“It’s so much easier because before you had M-1 Global in the middle. Vadim and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye. There was a certain lack of trust I think between myself and our counterparts there. So it’s hard, it’s hard doing business when you’re always looking over your shoulder. And we tried doing everything the right way and it was tough with those guys.”
While Coker wasn’t thrilled doing business with M-1 Global, he said the problem was never with Emelianenko.
“Fedor was just the third party in that deal and I think this time it was so much simpler. It was like, ‘This is how we like to do it, this is who we see you fighting.’ And we cut a deal within 45 minutes. It took us a couple of months to get to that point, but to move anything with M-1 was really like a chore. It was challenging to say the least. I’ll give you an example. It was a co-promotion, so we’d have to put their logos on certain things. And they’d be out there with literally a tape measuring stick, making sure (the cage) was exact to the millimeter. And honestly I think they were getting a great deal because they were able to piggyback off Fedor’s efforts. Other than Fedor, I don’t know what they really brought to the table.”
