Clear the Air Tom Atencio

Written by: Mat Houchens

Tagged with: Affliction Day of Reckoning, Affliction Day of Reckoning Fight Card, Fedor vs Arlovski, Gina Carano vs Cris Cyborg, Gina Carano vs Cris Cyborg Affliction, January 24th, MMA Weekly Beatdown, Scotty Ferrell Radio Show, tom atencio, Tom Atencio Interview, UFC Affliction Negotiations, UFC Affliction Talk

Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 20:03

This news item was posted in Affliction category and has 1 Comment so far.

From Elite XC to the UFC and Affliction talks, rumors are circulating around the MMA blogosphere. In a quest to get to the bottom of some rumors: Affliction Day of Reckoning, Gina Carano vs Cris Cyborg on Affliction and the UFC/Affliction Negotiations, we had Tom Atencio on MMA Weekly Beatdown tonight to clear the air. (Tom also commented on Kimbo Slice that you can catch on the show).

Tom confirmed with us that the Fedor Emelianenko vs Andrei Arlovski fight is confirmed and will happen on the Affliction: Day of Reckoning fight card which will happen January 24th 2009 in Anaheim, CA. While the 24th isn’t set in stone just yet, it will be very shortly according to Atencio. The fight card is pretty much finalized and Affliction will be releasing the full fight card very shortly.

Don’t expect Gina Carano vs Cris Cyborg to be on this fight card though… or any future fight cards either. While Tom admits as a fan he wants to see the fight and knows other fans want to see the fight it might not make good business sense. He posed a good question about female fighting on future Affliction cards:

“What’s after that fight? Who do you have next?”

While you do have some fighters to choose from, the big fights are very limited. So don’t expect Affliction to jump on board of the female fighters just yet. They want to see the fight and will make it happen if it makes sense to all involved.

There were some recent talks about UFC and Affliction talking about allowing Affliction clothing back into the UFC. The rumors went as far as saying that Affliction was offering to stop promoting in order to get their clothes back on the fighters in the octagon. This is the perfect example of a snowball effect as Tom explained.

The talks were nothing of the sort. The talks were only about Randy Couture and his brand of Xtreme Couture. Affliction was trying to get UFC to allow Randy Couture to wear Xtreme Couture in the octagon. It wasn’t anything more than that. Tom thought it made sense:

The talks were only for Randy Couture to wear Xtreme Couture into the ring, not everyone. It just made sense, he’s a partner for the line.

He commented on how these rumors started as well wondering how things get twisted and snowball from the truth to a monster rumor that everyone is talking about.

We ended the interview with asking Tom about the chances of coming to Florida for an event. He definitely didn’t rule it out as an upcoming location but wouldn’t give us much more than that. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Florida venue in the future Tom.

We should have the finalized fight card very soon for Affliction Day of Reckoning so stay tuned for updated information on that. Don’t get your hopes up for Carano vs Cyborg on an Affliction card right now but don’t rule it out as a possibility. As for Randy Couture wearing Xtreme Couture into the octagon, it doesn’t look like the UFC is willing to work that out.

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One Response to “Clear the Air Tom Atencio”

Gina Carano Meet WEC, WEC Meet Gina Carano » MMA Chump - MMA News, Fight Cards, Rankings, Forums and more! said on Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 21:50

[...] Gina Carano, arguably the face of women’s MMA, hasn’t fallen off the radar either. We asked Tom Atencio about the possibility of Affliction picking up women’s MMA and the future looked cloudy. Maybe the recent news of Dana White using the WEC to “test [...]