written by Micahel Comeau

Saturday night's Affliction: Day of Reckoning event is approaching fast, and unlike the rest of the MMA world, I can't seem to get excited for this event. Chris Horodecki has been dropped from the card due to injury, and I don't have much interest in the Lindland/Belfort and Babalu/Sokodjou fight, but more importantly, the matchmaking just plain stinks and we're not getting the heavyweight bout we really want - Fedor Emelianenko vs. Josh Barnett.

Andrei Arlovski is a great fighter, but let's face facts. He's just not on Fedor's level. Roy Nelson did a good job of handling Andrei on the ground in their match at EliteXC: Heat and got royally screwed over by the ref who decided to stand up the fight despite Nelson having Andrei in side control, a dominant position. Fedor is an incredible and even bested BJJ master Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira on the ground in their matches. Fedor could actually benefit from Andrei Arlovski working his stand-up with top boxing trainer Freddie Roach. After all, like Keith Richards, Fedor can't be killed by conventional weapons. MMA striking and boxing are simply worlds apart and I'll bet on Fedor's explosiveness over Andrei's refinement any day of the week.

However, while Josh Barnett's stand-up isn't so hot, he is an excellent grappler and would give Fedor trouble on the ground. Plus, Fedor does not run from his opponents' supposed strengths. He had no problem standing with a prime Cro Cop, and had little trouble dealing with Nogueira's dangerous guard for extended periods of time. So it's safe to say that a Fedor/Barnett fight could go down as one of the greatest heavyweight matches of all time. And who is Josh fighting? Gilbert Yvel, a guy best known for attacking referees and biting opponents. Were there no child molesters available Saturday night?

What's worse is that Affliction does not seem to be interested in staying in business long enough to make this fight happen. According to wrestling/MMA journalist Dave Meltzer, Affliction is paying Andrei Arlovski $1 million+ to take on (get armbarred by?) Fedor Emelianenko, the world's greatest heavyweight fighter. Let's break down some numbers very quickly:

Affliction is charging $44.95 a pop for the pay-per-view. The cable company gets something like half of that. To pay Andrei $1 million, Affliction will have to sell about 45,000 units. And you know Fedor is getting a lot more than Andrei, so it's likely that Affliction will have to draw well over 100,000 buys just to pay Fedor and Andrei. The live gate will help, but once you factor in Affliction overpaying for fighters that don't draw, marketing/PR, location rental, insurance, operations crews, etc., they're going to be losing serious bucks on Saturday night.

This is an Amazon.com circa-1999 style of business in an unforgiving 2008 and it will prevent MMA fans from getting the fight we really want.