After reports circulated late yesterday afternoon that the UFC offered Fedor $30 million over 6 fights, a new pony, a few goats and Dana White’s first born many of us in the MMA media suspected complete BS, Zuffa spin or some combination thereof. Turns out we were right. Earlier today AOL Fanhouse–as legit of a source as you’ll find in the MMA media–confirmed that the real numbers were much more in line with what Zuffa usually pays fighters:

FanHouse has learned from a source close to the negotiations, who wished to remain anonymous, that the UFC offered Emelianenko a three-fight contract with a guarantee of less than $2 million per fight.

The source did confirm that Emelianenko was offered an immediate title shot against current UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar.

The report went on to say that if everything broke exactly right for Fedor and the UFC that he could potentially pocket $30 million but that its in no way guaranteed:

As Jonathan Snowden, the author of ‘Total MMA: Inside Ultimate Fighting,’ who also spoke to someone with knowledge of the negotiations, pointed out, it is possible that Emelianenko could make up to or even more than $30 million during his UFC run, but that amount wasn’t guaranteed up front.

“The number is based on Zuffa’s projections of what Fedor’s take of the PPV money would be, and the numbers they are projecting are based on selling a ton of PPV’s. The actual guarantee for Fedor is much more modest. It’s true that if business stays at record levels Fedor could walk away with $30 million. But that is no guarantee.”

We got a lot of reaction to the $30 mil/6 fight numbers and after giving the caveat that we were waiting for a verification from a respected media source of these figures we said that Fedor would be nuts if he didn’t sign the deal with the terms supposedly offered (M-1 cut of PPV revenues, etc.). The disparity between that report and the current offer being reported by highly respected outlets like AOL Fanhouse also calls into suspicion a lot of the other M1/Fedor favorable components of the deal. With Fedor’s worldwide popularity and other revenue sources (including the EA Sports video game which could be potentially huge–ask Tony Hawk about how this could possibly work out for Fedor) its pretty easy to understand why he turned down this offer.

Our understanding is that the really big sticking point is that Fedor wants a non-exclusive deal that would allow him to fight in Russia, Eastern Europe, Japan for different promotions. Much of the co-promotion insistence at this point is a bargaining chip–the basic idea being that M1 will give that up in exchange for a non exclusive contract. The UFC has no interest in a non-exclusive deal, and the risk inherent in that should be obvious on several levels. Perhaps the worst case scenario would be Fedor winning the UFC title, heading to Japan and dropping it in a trashcan proclaiming he’s the ‘undisputed world heavyweight champion’. Yeah, that’s the same scenario that Shane Douglas did when he won the NWA title and ECW changed from Eastern Championship Wrestling to Extreme Championship Wrestling but you get the point.

We’ll update this as events warrant but the big story at this point is that the $30 Fedor offer that has been reported is complete nonsense.

Fedor Turns Down 3 fight $1.5 million per offer @ AOL Fanhouse