All Hail the King

My writeup on one of my longtime heroes, the great Fedor Emelianenko, is on MMA opinion. A copy is posted below.

I first saw Fedor Emelianenko fight in 2002, when he took on Heath Herring, and just by looking at the guy, I was not impressed. He’s not big, he’s not muscular, and he’s not angry. But, I didn’t really know what it meant to be a fighter. Sure, I knew about the Gracies, but the way I had figured it, Rickson was built like a truck and he was the best, so it wasn’t like Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was this huge exception, where athletic prowess was irrelevant.

There is a moment in the lone round of the fight with Herring where Fedor picks Heath up and slams him down into the canvas, and I remember being twelve years old, watching that slam and going, “Damn.”

To say I follow Fedor with personal investment in his career is overstating it. There are fighters that I believe that I have a much bigger stake in, fighters who I have backed a little bit more than I realistically should have because I want them to get some extra attention. Still, there is something about Fedor that makes me, and every hardcore MMA fan I know, revert to the child/enthusiast in them, yelling and screaming at the TV.

Fedor is not as polarized as Muhammad Ali, nor as well covered as Mike Tyson. He does not have the mass media appeal of Bruce Lee, or the beard of Chuck Norris. Still, there’s no doubt in my mind that Fedor is the greatest fighter in the history of combat sports. He has dominated in a way that not even Rickson Gracie did, because Fedor has done it in the presence of men who, without him, would have been just as legendary, and anyone familiar with the history of the sport knows that Rickson only fought a handful of guys worth talking about.

Mirko CroCop and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira are titans of our time in a way that Sonny Liston and Evander Holyfield weren’t, because they bring aspects of the game that no one else does. They don’t talk big like Liston or boast some of the flamboyance that Holyfield did. They are, very much like Fedor, stone cold killers, who are explosive and dangerous and respectable, and they are well feared by those who are going to step in with them, a respect that doesn’t get pushed aside by big-talking boxers trying to make names for themselves.

People will ask me why Fedor is the greatest fighter ever, and I pull up Fedor vs. Randleman on youtube, or (if the UFC pulls it off for copyright reasons) the DVD I have of the Critical Countdown 2004 event where it went down. If they say that’s only one fight, I’ll point them to the Zuluzinho fight, the Goodridge fight or both Coleman matches. For those who understand how big the matchups between Fedor and his top rivals (fighters like CroCop and Nogueira) were, I walk them through Fedor’s game, and how he controlled those fights, even when it looked like he didn’t.

The fact is, nobody in the sport has stayed as dominant as long as Fedor has and, while people will dispute his status because he hasn’t fought top tier competition in a little while (though the fight with Mark Hunt wasn’t that long ago), when he fights Tim Sylvia in Adrenaline, he’ll remind us something very important: there’s a reason why he’s feared, because he is dangerous anywhere and everywhere.

I, like many of my fellow long time Pride fans, will be watching the approaching Adrenaline card, as it has offered us the opportunity to see Fedor fight a top heavyweight, even if that heavyweight is Tim Sylvia. Certainly, a war with the former UFC champion/ogre will be exciting. It will be the second time Fedor has fought an opponent with a size advantage and a supposed advantage in the standup department, but if Randy Couture can put the Maine-iac down with a punch, who’s going to say that Fedor can’t end this fight standing, as well as on the ground.

The sport is changing, but Fedor seems to evolve even faster. Hopefully, we will see a new level of performance in his fight with Sylvia. While a debut in the UFC seems unlikely, at least in the immediate future, the presence of Fedor as a force in the world of independent MMA and as the most dominant heavyweight in the world seems unquestionable.