So it’s official: Affliction just saved the better part of a million bucks by cutting Tim Sylvia from their third card:
“It’s his second knockout in a row, and I don’t want to take a chance on anything,” Atencio said. “The fight is less than 60 days away.”
Atencio added that no one from the California State Athletic Commission contacted him about taking Sylvia off the card, but he felt it was in Sylvia’s best interest to take some time off to heal.
I’m interested in knowing how much Tim’s agent / event promoter Monte Cox paid him to fight Ray Mercer. Lots of people have been giving Cox shit for running Sylvia’s career into the ground, what with allowing him to leave the UFC and involving him in the Mercer freakshow. Up until this point, the fact that Cox had managed to land Sylvia an $800,000 fight with Affliction was enough to erase a lot of the criticism. But now a similar payday has been derailed, and Monte is looking like a pretty big idiot.
Fortunately, Cox must be getting used to that lately. He used to be one of the most respected agents in the business and still somehow is, despite his numerous blunders - an indication that MMA agents as a whole suck. But over the past two and a half years he’s been taken for a ride by Scientologists, dinner theatre losers, and crazy Russians. Even after all this he still swears by handshake deals. Maybe that works in Sugar Fairy Candy Land where everyone works together to save the gumdrop princess, but in MMA that’s a recipe for getting yourself and your clients fucked over.
