The Affliction: Banned matchup between Syliva and Fedor will be for the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts–WAMMA for short–unified heavyweight title. Never heard of WAMMA? That’s because its a new creation of Monte Cox:

When Tim Sylvia meets Fedor Emelianenko at Affliction: Banned on July 19 in Anaheim, Calif., it will be for the mixed martial arts heavyweight championship of the world, it was announced Saturday before Adrenaline MMA’s debut event at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

There are UFC champions, PRIDE champions and EliteXC champions, among others, but Sylvia-Emelianenko will be the first to award a belt from the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts, which is seeking to unify the titles to recognize true champions of the sport.

“It’s huge,� said Monte Cox, the Bettendorf-based promoter/agent who heads up Adrenaline and also represents Sylvia. “We desperately need a sanctioning body or organization that’s not biased, an independent organization like boxing has.

“Right now, there are no world champions, in my opinion. There is the UFC champion, there’s an EliteXC champ — those are simply champions of organizations. There is nothing to say that the two best guys in the world fought and this guy is now the world champ. That’s never been done.�

Good idea and longterm something that MMA needs. Short term–its meaningless without the participation of the UFC and you can imagine the f-bomb laden response to that suggestion that you’d get from Dana White. At some point, however, it *could* theoretically at least gain enough validity that the UFC could be forced by public opinion to play along. Stay tuned….

Sylvia, Emelianenko to fight for mixed martial arts world title in July @ Quad City Times