Aleksander Emelianenko, the utterly frightening brother of heavily-courted Fedor Emelianenko, told Sport.ru recently that he sides with Dana White on the issue of manager Vadim Finkelstein being a difficult negotiator.

“And all this talk about the restrictive conditions when signing the contract with the UFC comes only from [Vadim] Finkelstein, who wants to promote his own business through any Fedor-UFC contract,” he told the site, which was picked up by Fighter’s Only. “You can negotiate with the UFC. I know that their contracts are sufficiently flexible.”

In fairness to Finkelstein, what Aleksander considers reasonable may differ from what the most sought-after free agent in the world is able to demand: the brothers are on vastly different levels in the sport’s hierarchy.

There were also rumblings Finkelstein wanted a Russian stadium built and Red Devil fighters employed by whichever promotion Emelianenko sided with. It’s worth noting that Affliction did not assign any construction crews out of the country and slotted only one Red Devil athlete -- Kirill Sidelnikov -- out of the 30-odd fights they promoted (or tried to promote).

I am not a lawyer -- an unnecessary statement if there ever was one -- but I’ve had more than one tell me that open dialogue about private contract negotiations doesn’t help any parties involved. Hopefully, the next thing we hear from either Finkelstein or White will be an announcement of a compromise and not a Tweet from the conference room.