On the other hand, M-1 is still making its case in the media for a co-promotional event with the UFC to put ‘The Last Emperor’ in the ring with the UFC heavyweight champ:

Publicly, M-1 Global COO Joost Raimond is still bullish on the prospect of co-promoting with the UFC.

One-on-one, he admits his company’s calls have fallen on deaf ears.

“It’s an invitation we’ve been screaming on the tops of roofs for two years,” Raimond told MMAWeekly.com following the Los Angeles press conference for Affliction “Trilogy.”

Still, he made his pitch once again, both in New York and Los Angeles. His hope: to break the stalemate and bring M-1 Global and the UFC to the negotiating table. It was half challenge, half plea.

“I think one of our great competitors has always been the UFC and still is the UFC,” Raimond said Thursday in Hollywood. “I think there’s a big difference, though. Our standpoint towards MMA is that it’s all about the fights, it’s all about the athletes, it’s all about us trying to bring you the best fights possible, and bringing out the true champions.

“I’m not a sucker for statistics, but we did a little bit of homework, and we came up with an interesting fact. If you look at the UFC over history, if you include the interim heavyweight champions, they’ve had 17 champions in total. Mr. Fedor Emelianenko has done eight fights against UFC champions, against five different opponents. If we exclude his fights against Mr. Nogueira, who was a formidable opponent in his time, Fedor spent less than 15 minutes in the ring with these UFC champions and defeated them all. What we would like to see is that in future, we bring out the champions from any organization, whether it’s UFC or another organization, and we bring out the best fights.

“I’d like to reach out with an invitation to Mr. Dana White, Mr. Brock Lesnar, and Mr. Frank Mir to come out to our show, the Trilogy show, and I’m sure we can arrange some front seat tickets, and they can watch a real championship fight. Hopefully we can follow up in the same lines as what the UFC has done for Mr. Mirko Cro Cop in a one-fight deal. I think we can make that happen for other occasions, and we’d like to make that happen.”

M-1 thinks that the only source of pressure that would be effective would be the fans:

M-1’s hope is that fans will eventually force the UFC to make a deal.

“I think the only way that the UFC will perhaps open up a little bit, and allow their fighters to go elsewhere and compete is when the fans ask for it,” said Raimond. “It’s not going to happen if I ask for it, but if the fans ask for it, it may.”

Raimond laughed when informed of a viral campaign to chant Emelianenko’s name during UFC 100 next month.

“That would be a good idea,” he said. “That would be fun.”

Again, from a competitive standpoint we fully agree that it should all be about the fighters and that in a perfect world promotions should be willing to work together to put the best competitors in a ring or a cage against each other. At the same time, however, we understand why the UFC doesn’t want to trash their entire business model and hegemony among the mass media and casual MMA fanbase to do so. At some point, if the fans are educated as to the holistic view of MMA as a sport it’ll happen. They’ll ask questions about why the WEC featherweights don’t fight their Japanese counterparts or, in this case, why the UFC heavyweight champion doesn’t fight the *real* heavyweight champ.

M-1 exec continues UFC plea for co-promotion @ MMA Weekly