M-1 Global president Vadim Finkelstein has issued a lengthy statement on his company’s website, responding virtually line-by-line to remarks made by Bas Boon on a Dutch message board in September, wherein the Golden Glory leader described M-1 as “a bunch of crooks” and “robbers.”
Boon went into greater detail the following week in a conversation with Middle Easy; his main sticking point was that he is still owed money for managerial duties performed in 2004 for Finkelstein’s top client, Fedor Emelianenko. The story is quite complicated and a bit hard to follow, but Boon claims responsibility for bringing Fedor to Finkelstein’s Red Devil stable, as well as securing bouts in Japan and negotiating fight purses for the Russian heavyweight and other Red Devil fighters. All this while being allegedly being intimidated by the Yakuza.
Here’s an excerpt from Finkelstein’s statement:
Bas, seems like everybody owes you.
But I think that readers understand what kind of person you are, that your primary business is a fraud, you tried to make money of everything. You indeed did help me in the beginning: you provided me with several athletes and paid them, but you forget to mention that you got all the rights for the shows which I made while losing money, from 50k to 200k US$ on each show.
Every reasonable person can understand that you are inadequate and your quotation that “Fedor’s management are crooks” should be addressed to yourself.
I like how that last bit is just a slightly more eloquent way of saying “I’m rubber, you’re glue.”
When issuing his original comments, Boon made it clear that he wouldn’t let the bad blood between himself and M-1 stand in the way of an eventual Fedor-Alistair Overeem showdown. With both men under contract to Strikeforce, I don’t see any reason why it would… but things might get tense when that fight’s time comes, and the two managers have to spend some time in the vicinity of one another.