M1C Group B bracket final matches Saturday night in Korea While most of North America enjoys rest and fireworks and this Independence Day the M-1 Challenge Team USA West fighters will be looking for fireworks of their own as they face the once-mighty Russia Imperial team in South Korea. This event will be webstreamed as a pay-per-view for fans outside the US and Korea only. US fans will have to wait until HDNet’s weekly episodes catches up with this show, probably sometime in September.
This show is not to be confused with Friday’s broadcast of the M1C archives on HDNet. As reported earlier that episode is England vs. Japan from the third event.
One could make the comparison to the old cold war enemies facing off close to the DMZ but this match between USA West and Russia Imperial is more of a passing of the baton than arch enemies. USA West lead the “Group B” bracket with an 8-2 overall record and are the only team from that group to have two team wins after two matches. Russia Imperial won the whole shebang last year however this year the team is struggling to stay out of last place as they limp into this final fight of the bracket with a 2-8 record. Thankfully the Imperialists (couldn’t resist) have added three new members to this lineup which is good in that the team needs to turn around but bad in that now not a single member from the winning ’08 season is left. Best case scenario for Russia is to sweep USA West and only be one fight behind them at the end of the season while assisting Brazil into the quarter finals.
With USA West only one win over Brazil a best case scenario would mean they win the bracket but anything less than a sweep could put Brazil over the top. USA West don’t have much to worry about considering four of five fighters that helped USA West to its 4-1 win over South Korea will be back with the only change being KOTC LHW champion Tony Lopez.
USA West vs. Russia Imperial Dave Jansen vs. Amirkhan Mazikhov Fabio Nasicmento vs. Marat Ilaev Giva Santana vs. Radmir Gabdulin Tony Lopez vs. Viktor Nemkov Shane Del Rosario vs. Maksim Grishin FULL STORY...
