Josh Barnett waiting for Affliction: Day of Reckoning opponent

Written by Jim Murphy   |   Friday, November 28 2008

Josh Barnett currently faces the difficult task of training for an unknown opponent at Affliction: Day of Reckoning (Photo: Susumu Nagao)

Josh Barnett has been slated for one of the top matches on Affliction’s “Day of Reckoning” event since it was announced late last summer.  Originally, he was slated to be on the undercard to a main event between Andrei Arlovski and WAMMA heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko.  With Fedor on medical suspension due to a hand injury suffered in his July victory over Tim Sylvia, Barnett was moved into the main event slot of the original “Day of Reckoning” event slated for the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas on October 11th.

Not long after Barnett and Arlovski made an appearance at a NASCAR race to promote Mike Skinner’s Affliction sponsored car, the plan changed again—this time due to the company’s decision to reschedule the event entirely.  The Barnett/Arlovski matchup, though eagerly anticipated by MMA purists, hadn’t really created much buzz among the UFC-loving online fanboy community.  Furthermore, Affliction had a promotional deal in the works with Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and—according to VP Tom Atencio—a lot of “interference” from the UFC to keep them from running a card in Las Vegas. 

On October 22, Affliction officially announced the rescheduled “Day of Reckoning” event with Fedor vs. Arlovski as the main event.  Prior to the announcement there had been rumors that Barnett would fight the WAMMA champion, but Affliction opted for the more marketable matchup with Arlovski.  Most recently, Affliction released the entire fight card including three fighters—Barnett, Vitor Belfort and preliminary fighter Brett Cooper--listed with “TBA” as an opponent.

Barnett’s most likely opponents at this point are former EliteXC contender Brett Rogers and Aleksander Emelianenko, aka “Fedor’s brother”.  From a competitive and promotional standpoint, both potential matchups offer differing upsides and downsides.  There are also issues that make signing either fighter somewhat problematic for the promotion.

In theory, Affliction would like to book a match that would help set up a future fight between Barnett and Fedor.  Barnett was the only top heavyweight in PRIDE that never got a shot at “The Last Emperor” and there are many who suggest that he could provide the most credible challenge to the WAMMA champion.  Furthermore, there’s been some "heat" between Aleksander and Barnett though much of this was typical fighter name calling. 

Rogers, however, might be the most realistic opponent for Barnett at this time.  He’s definitely fight for less money than Aleksander, thus would help Affliction keep their fighter payroll down while allowing for a credible fight.   Rogers has a good “look”—he’s a big, rugged African American guy with a Mohawk who is actually bigger and heavier than Barnett at 6’5” 265.  Physical stature notwithstanding, however, it is a fight that borders on a competitive mismatch.  Rogers is undefeated in his brief MMA career at 7-0, but he’s not fought a particularly compelling level of competition.    In fact, the only immediately recognizable name on his resume is James Thompson whom he beat via TKO in February 2008—and the only reason that a mainstream MMA fan would remember Thompson is his matchup against Kimbo Slice in the main event of Elite XC’s CBS debut.  Ironically, Rogers was initially being groomed to face Kimbo but was eventually deemed as too dangerous a fighter for that role.

With all due respect to Rogers—who is a tough guy with plenty of potential—Barnett would almost certainly demolish him at this point in their respective careers.  Of course if you’re trying to set up a potential fight against Fedor that might not be a bad thing, as “promotion 101” dictates that making Barnett look as strong as possible here is the right setup to maximize interest in a bigger fight forthcoming.  On the other hand, Affliction might lose some “promotional capital” by having what is essentially a “squash match” (to use some pro wrestling terminology) as the #2 fight on the card. 

There’s a couple of potential issues with signing Rogers—first, there’s the questionable contractual status that all of EliteXC’s former fighters are experiencing.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, Pro Elite is maintaining that they’re still a viable entity and will be promoting again in 2009.  For that reason, their fighters aren’t yet “free agents” and are still technically under contract to EliteXC.  Furthermore, the disparity in experience between Barnett and Rogers could mean that the California State Athletic Commission would refuse to sanction the fight.  There is some precedent for this—PRIDE attempted to make a fight between Mark Hunt and Butterbean on one of their Las Vegas shows only to have the Nevada Athletic Commission put the kibosh on it as being “non-competitive”.  

There is at least one obvious advantage that Rogers offers over Aleksander Emelianenko—should he pull the upset and defeat Barnett it would allow Affliction to book a match between him and Fedor.   The Emelianenko brothers are very close and it’s almost certain that Fedor wouldn’t fight his brother under any circumstance.  Barnett would likely win either matchup, but against Rogers there would at least be a “Plan B” available to the promotion should the upset occur.

Aleksander Emelianenko, meanwhile, would certainly offer a more competitive fight.  Though he’s frequently been characterized as Fedor’s “underachieving” little brother (and Fedor himself has criticized Aleks for his on again/off again dedication to training) the fact is that he’s got a pretty impressive MMA resume in his own right.  At 14-3 he’s only lost to high level competition—Barnett beat him by submission on a 2006 PRIDE show, along with Mirko Cro Cop and Fabrico Werdum.  His victories haven’t always come against the best competition, though he does hold wins over Olympic judo gold medalist Pawel Nastula and highly regarded Russian Sergei Kharitonov.  Ironically, he also holds a victory over James Thompson whom he KO’d in 11 seconds at PRIDE 28.   He’s also got the aforementioned semi-feud with Barnett to make the fight attractive as well as the obvious “rematch” angle.
On the other hand, his promotional value in the US is unclear.  Aside from the fact that he’s Fedor’s brother, he’s not exactly well known to the mainstream American market.  That’s not surprising since he’s never fought in North America, but the reality is that Rogers might actually be better known to American fans if for no other reason than his appearance on the undercard of Kimbo Slice’s network TV debut.  A Barnett/Aleks rematch would be of greater interest in Japan where most of his significant fights have occurred.

A bigger question mark concerning Aleks is his health, specifically the reason why he wasn’t granted medical clearance by the CSAC to fight at Affliction’s first event.  Aleks was originally slated to take on Paul “The Headhunter” Buentello at Affliction: Banned but was pulled from the event before the weigh-in for what the CSAC vaguely termed “failure to meet all licensing requirements”.  As California has very strict medical privacy laws, then CSAC Executive Director was not at liberty to elaborate beyond the fact that it was a medical issue.  Rumors immediately began to circulate that Aleks had tested positive for Hepatitis B which would almost certainly mean that he’d be unable to get medical clearance a second time around.  Aleks has repeatedly disputed these reports since, suggesting that it was simply a matter of not being able to get the necessary medical examinations in time due to a delay in receiving his US visa.  He did fight on November 21st   for the M-1 promotion in Russia, though given that country’s lax oversight of fight sports along with the myriad political connections of M-1 head Vadim Finkelstein (who also manages both Emelianenko brothers) it’s not possible to draw any conclusions about the reason for his medical issues in California from his participation there.

In his most recent interviews with the Russian fight media, however, Aleks has suggested that he will be fighting Barnett at “Day of Reckoning” but has also indicated a strong possibility that he’d be fighting on the DREAM/K-1 New Years’ Eve event.  Should he end up fighting in Japan at the Fields Dynamite! event it would make any effort to get licensed in California all the more problematic with only a 21 day turnaround between that card and the Affliction event.

There have also been rumors in the Japanese fight media that Barnett will take on Kevin Randleman at the competing Sengoku Non Ran New Years’ event.  There’s been no comment on this from either Barnett or the promotion, but with Barnett already inked to the Affliction date that’s unlikely due to the short turnaround between fights as well.  Barnett was scheduled to fight at Sengoku 6 on November 1st, but according to promoters no suitable opponent could be found.  Barnett did participate in a pro wrestling match for Antonio Inoki’s Inoki Genome Federation (IGF) promotion just a few days ago.

With all of Josh Barnett’s experience in the Japanese fight game—notorious for their lack of organization—he may be comfortable training to face an unknown opponent.  For Affliction, however, it doesn’t look good to have arguably their #2 heavyweight slated for a semi-final match on their next card against “TBA”.

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