Saint Petersburg- M-1  Global officials held a press conference recently at the “Flying Dutch” restaurant to discuss the upcoming Eastern European M-1 Selection tournament.   At the press conference, pairings for the upcoming lightweight, welterweight, and middleweight tournament fights were determined.
M-1 Global Executive Vasiliy Tyutin  met with the press and explained the changes to this year’s M-1 Selection tournament format.   Tyutin, explained to the media that this year’s tournament would  be based on 4 regions,  Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Americas.  This is a departure from previous years when competition was based on a country vs. country format.

Each region will have 2 combined teams at this year’s  M-1 Challenge.  Teams will be made up from tournament winners from the Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Americas,  and Asian M-1 Selection tournaments.  4 regional tournaments will take place including  5 weight divisions: lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight, and heavyweight. Regional tournament winners will advance and have the opportunity to represent his country in the M-1 Challenge.

Teams from Eastern Europe will be put together from winners of  Eastern European M-1 Selection spring 2010 tournament- the best fighters from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will determine a M-1 Challenge team.
The M-1 Selection 2010 tournaments have a Grand Prix system with the losing fighters being eliminated until the best fighter in each weight class is determined.

The first round of “M-1 Selection Eastern Europe” will take place in Saint-Petersburg in Sportive Palace “Yubileyniy”

Mikhail Smirnov, The chief judge of Eastern Europe was also on hand.  Smirnov discussed the sometimes misunderstood issues of refereeing during the MMA tournaments. According to Smirnov, disputes occasionally arise due to a of lack of understanding therefereeing process in MMA tournaments by the athletes. Some athletes become familiar and comfortable with one system of rules (e.g. boxing or sambo) and sometimes are not as familiar with the broader scoring system used MMA fights.  Dominating, activity, attempts to submit, scoring punches and technique are just a few of the  actions the judges evaluate. Mikhail expressed hope that the number of disputes will decrease with every subsequent tournament.

All 16 rounds of the regional tournaments will be shown on “Boets” TV channel. It was also
announced that every round of the 2010 M-1 Selection season would be broadcast live on
www.sherdog.com , one of the world’s largest online mixed martial arts websites

The first event of the 2010 season took place on the 5th of February in Holland. The opening-round winners in the Western Europe region were crowned, and will now move forward to round two, one step closer to representing their region at this year’s  M-1 Challenge.

Also featured in the February 5 show was a bout between female fighters. According
to Vasiliy Tyutin the spectators were the just as engaged for the ladies as they were for their male counterparts. One journalist asked if M-1 was going to develop in this direction and Tyutin answered that unfortunately there was ambiguous attitude to female fights in Russia, and this is the reason why the progress in this area is much slower then with male fights.

The start of Eastern Europe regional tournament takes place on On 26th of February in
Saint-Petersburg at Sports Arena “Yubileyniy”.  Fighters of three weight classes ( lightweight, welterweight, middleweight ) will compete for the right to make the step to the next stage in tournament.

Pairings for the opening round of the Eastern European M-1 Selection tournament took place,  as lotto balls were selected at random to determine opening round match ups.

Opening round match ups for the lightweight division

Karen Grigoryan (Action Force) 20-3-1  vs  Magomed Magomedov  (Moscow)  10-1
Alexander Sarnavskiy (Rusfighters)  6-0  - Maxim Kuptsov  (Combat Bears)
4-0
Vener Galiev  55-5-1  - Yuriy Saakyan (“Sokol” Sports Club, M-1 Ukraine,
Chernigov) 2-1
Shamil Abdulkerimov (Gorets)  8-0-1 – Artem Damkovskiy (Belorussia)  7-4

Opening round match ups for the welterweight division

Magomed Sultanhamedov (Gorets) 26-4  - Pavel Kush (“MAKFIGHT.UA“, M-1
Ukraine, Makarov) 6-0
Zagirov Dibir (Moscow) 6-1  - Anatoliy Lavrov (Crazy Bears)  9-6
Gasan Umalatov (Combat Bears)  7-0-1 – Alexey Belyaev (Action Force)  7-2
Ruslan Khasanov (Legion) 5-1 –  Murad Magomedov (Rusfighters) 2-2

Opening round match ups for the middleweight division

Rasul Magomedov (Legion) 5-0  - Ilya Malyukov (Crazy Bears)  10-3
Igoe Savelyev (Red Devil)  6-0-1  - Shamil Tinagadjiev (Sochi Star)  6-1
Vyacheslav Vasilevskiy  (Combat Bears) 9-1   – Sergey Guzev  (RFP, M-1
Ukraine, Lvov)  3-0
Alikhan Magomedov (Anapa)  8-0  - Ibragim Khanilov  (Gorets)  5-1-1

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