Kang forsakes America, may secretly be a communist

The most interesting thing about Denis Kang is the fact that he spells his first name with one N instead of two. I'm not going to deny the fact that he's a great fighter ... he clearly is. But for some reason I just can't get all hot and bothered about this guy like I am about Georges St Pierre. And apparently Dana White is the same, because he 'let' Kang sign with K1 HERO's.

When it comes to a bidding war for top dogs, I'm sure the UFC can outmuscle anyone's offer if they want to. But when it comes to a guy who's huge in Korea but an unknown Stateside, how much money can the UFC really justify to try and bring him over? It's a real shame too, because Kang was one of the few middleweights available who could have taken the fight to Anderson Silva. Now the UFC is stuck going to plan B and signing Ryo Chonan instead.

There was an interesting quote from Kang in the article that I wanted to comment on:

"I was scheduled to fight on September 11 in the Spirit MC tournament, which was my first shot at winning a title," says Kang. "I told Dana if he'd let me fight in the tournament, I'd fly right back to Vegas and jump right into doing the show but they didn't want me to do that. I wouldn't budge and they wouldn't budge so we both kind of agreed that it would be best for me to take the fight in Korea. I did and I won the belt."

He did it and he won the SpiritMC belt. And a few matches later he shattered his hand defending that belt, taking him off the market for months and scratching him from appearing in the final PRIDE shows. So if you ever want a perfect example of why the UFC doesn't and shouldn't allow it's fighters to fight for other organizations, here's exhibit A.

**UPDATE** We originally referenced Kang's quote as being related to his March 2007 fight in SpiritMC. He was actually talking about way back when in 2004. We've changed the article so we still sorta make our point. Thanks to the guys at MMANews who are constantly berating me for not knowing my shit!