Scott Coker believes Fedor Emelianenko will return to Strikeforce cage in July

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

With Zuffa purchasing Strikeforce earlier this month, an obvious question with the sale was how it affected Strikeforce's relationship between M-1 Global/Fedor Emelianenko and Strikeforce. Though the company line has been "business as usual" since the announcement, there has still been questions surrounding whether or not we will see Fedor Emelianenko in the cage for Zuffa-owned Strikeforce.

As far as Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker is concerned, he believes the answer to that is "yes," and he thinks we'll see Fedor return this summer.

"Fedor's gonna fight sometime in July," Coker said in an interview with Sherdog.com on Wednesday. "It's probably toward the end of July or mid-July, but we have fights with Fedor that we're gonna honor and continue forward. We're gonna do the co-branding exercise that we do with M-1 every time we do fights with them."

"The opponent has not been chosen, but I think having Fedor involved close to the tournament as an alternate is definitely a possibility."

Fedor still has three fights remaining on a contract extension signed prior to his February loss to Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva, and for Coker, whether he completes those three fights or not is up to him and depends on how he performs this summer.

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Penick's Analysis: We'll get one more fight out of him at the least, but we'll see how things play out. I hope we see him try to make the drop to light heavyweight, or at least a 215 lb. catchweight, for the fight against Dan Henderson. That would serve to be a highly entertaining and sellable fight for both, and it would serve to finish out Henderson's final fight on his Strikeforce contract, which would likely prompt a return to the UFC that seemed improbable until this sale.

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