Anatomy Of The Woods-Uchitel Negotiation...With A Little Help From Online Friends?

I know a lot of you are sick of tabloid talk and I certainly am leery citing websites I never had looked at before this week, but I do think the last few days exposed an interesting saga of the backstage negotiations and positioning that may have taken place.

If Radar is to be believed, they are reporting Friday night that "Tiger has reached an agreement" that will pay alleged mistress Rachel Uchitel "more than one million but less than three million" dollars to not reveal information about their relationship.

We'll likely never know if the story is accurate, but Radar does say the negotiation was "acrimonious at times" and a close look at events over the last few days would suggest their description may be accurate.

The backstory, all times EST:

Rachel Uchitel's link to Tiger Woods was revealed last Wednesday November 25th when the Enquirer hit newsstands.

Friday morning the 27th Tiger has his accident.

By the weekend Uchitel was talking to bloggers and reporters who contacted her via Facebook, erratically issuing denials.

She then flew to LA Sunday to meet with attorney Gloria Allred, who eventually scheduled a Thursday at 11:30 press conference. That morning, Dec. 3rd, TMZ reports at 6:10 a.m. in a post titled Tiger's Mistress -- I Lied For Him that "sources tell TMZ the fight at Tiger's home the morning of the crash was triggered by a series of text messages between Tiger and the woman."
Just hours after that post, the press conference is cancelled.
Radar reports at 12:30 p.m. that the cancellation came after last minute phone calls from Tiger's "representatives."
Two hours later Thursday, Radar reports that Uchitel has saved hundreds of text messages and other evidence.

Now here's where it gets interesting.

This TMZ report appears on December 3rd at 6:03 p.m. titled "Tiger Woods Used Childhood Friend as Cover" and suggests Bryon Bell coordinated Uchitel's travel to Australia.

On Dec 3rd 2009 at 12:09PM TMZ reports "Rachel and Tiger Spoke Last Night"

And then what appears to be the turning point, TMZ posts a 12:31 a.m. Dec. 4th item offering "Concrete Proof of Tiger's Secret Rendezvous" with what appears to be an email to Uchitel from Bell confirming her flight to Australia. The email has to have come from Uchitel/Allred or someone who has hacked her account, no?

Then Friday morning Dec. 4 at 9:33 a.m. TMZ posts an item titled "Tiger Woods Didn't Pay Rachel a Penny" and claimed there were "many phone calls back and forth between Rachel, Tiger and their reps," and that Rachel "decided not to come out fighting at a news conference."
Radar posts a lurid item about Tiger, Rachel and Ambien Friday Dec 04, 2009 @ 05:15PM

Now at 8:52PM EST on December 4th, Radar reports a multi-million dollar settlement has been reached, less than 24 hours after the apparent leak to TMZ of Bell's email to Uchitel and just hours after another revealing suggestion on Radar.

Must have been a lively few days of negotiations.

And it looks like a 7&6 drumming for Allred, with an assist from TMZ and Radar.