A Thursday just isn’t a Thursday without a little bit of Fedor news that will make you throw your coffee table across the room in pure elation. MMA Ironman somehow got their hands on tomorrow’s issue of Nikkan Sports which features a report about Fedor potentially facing Yoshida in his retirement fight April 25th in ASTRA. Since most of you guys probably don’t speak Japanese, largely in part because there’s something called ‘English’ that keeps getting in the way, here is my rather accurate translation of the newspaper’s feature story. Now excuse me while I pat myself on the back.
An article in tomorrow’s Nikkan Sports newspaper says that Yoshida’s retirement fight in ASTRA will most likely be against Fedor. The exact quote is “Retirement match against Fedor, world’s strongest man”. According to the newspaper, Fedor’s camp got in contact with Yoshida when he announced his retirement fight somewhere around February 8th and both parties have been negotiating ever since. There is a final meeting that will be held in Japan at Dream 13 which should finalize the negotiations. If nothing pans out after Dream 13, then they apparently have other fighters readily available to fight Yoshida.
If the fight is finalized at Dream 13, then it would mean Fedor would have just under a month to get ready for Yoshida at ASTRA which goes down April 25th. That’s ichiban. [Source]
Update: Josh Gross of SI contacted a representative for M-1 Global who denied the allegations that Fedor will fight Yoshida.