Update II: 2011 Leaf MMA Metal

The last time there was any substantial news regarding 2011 Leaf MMA Metal was back in November, since then the revised release date of December 5^th has come and gone and no major news has come out since until yesterday. In a release from Leaf president Brian Gray, MMA Metal will finally see the light of day by the end of March.

He went on to discuss some serious changes since the last announcement. In November the set was scheduled to include a 55 fighter base card checklist, there were 3 autograph insert sets and boxes were supposed to run around $50-55/box and 300-500 total cases were going to be printed. The set now will contain only autographs, no base set and no relics, the price will be set at $120/box and will contain 8 on-card autographs with only 150 cases printed. There will only be the base autograph metal card (there will be parallel versions) and the National Pride autograph set only.

Rory MacDonald, Gilbert Melendez and Jon Jones have all been announced to be included in the set and Cris Cyborg, Fabricio Werdum, Gegard Mousasi and Megumi Fujii were originally announced back in November so I would hope they are still scheduled to be included.

Apparently all the cards are signed and in Leaf’s hands, the boxes are printed and ready to go and they are just waiting for the final orders from distributers before shipping the product out.

No updated images or sales sheets have been released so we can only guess as to what the final product will look like. Brian has made it clear that the future of Leaf’s MMA product line is based on the collector’s interest in this set. He was disappointed with the returns on the 2010 Leaf MMA set and basing all his decisions on this set.