Stick a fork in it

Affliction is done. At least, as a mixed martial arts promotion. The details are still sketchy – and in some cases, downright conflicting – but the nut of it is that the failure of the Affliction: Trilogy event announced earlier today is the last straw. Now the company is going back to focusing on what it does best, selling obnoxious tattoo-emblazoned T-shirts to UFC wannabes.

According to Yahoo! Sports, Affliction and the Ultimate Fighting Championship are expected to release a joint statement on Friday afternoon announcing that Affliction would no longer promote MMA events and instead its clothing division would become a sponsor of the UFC once again.

Affliction used to be one of the UFC’s biggest sponsors until it launched its own fight series in July 2008. Former PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko headlined its only two cards, defeating Tim Sylvia and then Andrei Arlovski. The events drew 14,832 attendees ($2.1 million gate) and 13,318 ($1.4 million gate), respectively. However, the organization reportedly paid out nearly $7 million in fighter salaries. That’s a lot of moola for fights only hardcore MMA fans were watching and I guess Affliction’s pockets (Donald Trump, M-1 Global and Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Productions) didn’t go any deeper.

Losing their main event at Affliction: Trilogy between Fedor and Josh Barnett due to a drug scandal earlier this week killed their pay-per-view revenue, meaning they’d have to sell a few more T-shirts at the gate in order to cut their fighters a paycheque.

A possible co-promotional deal with Strikeforce was rumoured to be in the works but with this latest news, it was either only a rumour or it just plain fell through. UFC president Dana White told Yahoo! Sports that an Affliction attorney “flew to Las Vegas only days after UFC 100 and offered to fold and turn its contracts over to the UFC if the UFC would remove its ban on its fighters wearing Affliction T-shirts.” While White reportedly told the attorney where to stick the offer, it now seems likely a deal was in place whether Affliction: Trilogy fell apart or not. And that line in Affliction VP Tom Atencio’s statement about canceling the event because his “first priority is to ensure that all future events live up to the company’s high standards” was just normal PR smokescreen bullshit.

As for the fighters under contract with Affliction, who knows what will happen to them. Will the UFC take over their contracts? Hard to say. The only certainty is that Dana White wants to bring Fedor Emelianenko into the fold and this brings him one step closer. He might even want to toss Josh Barnett a bone for making this all possible. And speaking of Barnett, this really shouldn’t be put on his shoulders as I’ve read on some fan forums, just as Affliction never should have been built on the drawing power of one fighter, Fedor Emelianenko. Affliction’s collapse goes much deeper than just one fight.

And consider this: what if Barnett’s B sample comes back negative for steroids when they test it?

Stay tuned, folks. This one’s far from over.