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22/06/09 - Arlovski dropped by Affliction
Andrei Arlovski will not be offered a new contract by Affliction Entertainment following the expiry of his current deal, which ended with Arlovski's fight against Brett Rogers on the June 6th Strikeforce show.
The former UFC champion, who lost to Rogers by KO after 11 seconds, had a three-fight deal with Affliction which took in clashes with Ben Rothwell, Fedor Emelianenko and most recently Rogers
"His contract has expired and right now we have so many fighters under contract that we are just concentrating on working with them," Affliction VP Tom Atencio told Fighters Only earlier.
Asked if they would be talking to Arlovski about a new contract he said "No, we are not looking at that right now."
Tim Sylvia, another former UFC champion now fighting for Affliction, was pulled off the forthcoming 'Affliction: Trilogy' show after suffering a bad KO defeat against Ray Mercer last week.
But Atencio says the decision to remove him from the card was purely health-oriented - Sylvia will not be following Arlovski into free agency just yet.
"Right now we just didn't want to fight him because of the knockout [loss to Mercer]," Atencio explained. "But that doesn't mean we aren't going to fight him in the future."
The same cannot be said of Aleksander Emelianenko, brother of Affliction champion Fedor and a skilled heavyweight in his own right.
Aleks was pulled from last year's Affliction 1 card at the last-minute and has since been dogged by rumours that he has Hepatitis B. But the Russian fighter maintains there was nothing wrong with his blood samples and has repeatedly stated he will be fighting on forthcoming Affliction cards.
"I haven't spoken with him and we haven't talked about him fighting or not," a slightly nonplussed Atencio said when this was put to him. "I'll be honest and say we haven't got any plans on him fighting with us in the future."
John Joe O'Regan
john.fightersonly@gmail.com
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