M-1 Global announces the signing of a contract with HDNet Fights. Starting on September, 19th the audience in the North America namely USA, Canada and Mexico will be able to watch the 2008 first season of M-1 Challenge on HDNet network.

Moreover several African countries will get the same opportunity if they watch GTV channel. Also inhabitants of Korea will watch M-1 Challenge on CBS, Brazil - on SporTV, Philippines - on Solar, India - on ZEE. Altogether 54 countries will be connected to this unique team competition show.

The list of African countries includes Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina-Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, C.A.R, Chad, Comoros Islands, Congo, Democratic republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory-Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Reunion, Rwanda, St.Helena, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zaire, Zimbabwe."

"M-1 Challenge 2009

Instead of ten participating teams, next year the challenge will be comprised of 16 countries.

The new candidates are the representatives from England, Croatia, Bulgaria, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Brazil and India.

M-1 Global will make the selection public in due time.

M-1 & Bulgaria

UFC veteran Yordan Radev who is of Bulgarian origin and Harry van Doorn (matchmaker of M-1 Global) were in Bulgaria to make contact with Lyuben Djubrilov of the Bulgarian MMA Federation. M-1 strongly believes in the future of MMA in Bulgaria which is comparable to the level of Russia a few years ago.

The Bulgarian team will participate in the Challenge of 2009 and the contract will be signed by the end of August 2008.

M-1 Challenge delivers the bright future for Cristea, Jones and Gibbs

It’s already clear that participation in the M-1 Challenge opened the door to a bright MMA future for some fighters of the Dutch team.

After his nerve-racking fight against Daisuke Nakamura (Pictures), in which he more then once brought the crowd on their feet with his fighting spirit, Japanese promotors showed great interest in Bogdan Cristea.

Former Judo champion Jason Jones also caught the eyes of the international promotors.

Strikeforce and Pro Elite seem to be interested and he will probably also start fighting in Deep in Japan.

Heavyweight Jessie Gibbs is also steadily building a reputation of his own. With his winning streak of three consecutive victories with a submission or referee stoppage he finds himself in the picture."

World Team

For some time there was a misunderstanding concerning the name of the World Team. At the first Challenge it was introduced as Team Germany because that day it was composed of only German fighters. Next the names World Star Team and Team Europe were mentioned.

There should be no more misunderstandings. The name of the team is “World Team”.

In Seoul Wim Deputte (-70 kg, Belgium), Norman Paraisy (Pictures) (-76 kg, France), Jordan Radev (Pictures) _-84 kg, Bulgaria), Bruno Carvalho (-93 kg, Brazil) and Stefan Struve (Pictures) (+ 93 kg, Holland) will represent the team.

Chef d’equipe is Harry van Doorn and he is assisted by coaches Bert Kops and Goksel Sahinbas.

Planning for 2009

Next to the 2-nd season Challenge M-1 Global intends to stage ambitious events in Moskow (Russia), Liverpool (England), Tokyo (Japan) and somewhere in the USA in 2009.

Fedor’s book

The MMA technique book Fedor wrote will be released on the American market by the end of August 2008."