A few days ago I wrote a post saying that if Fedor Emelianenko wants to come back to fight again he’d need to reinvent himself, that it was his antiquated training practices that was holding him back. After a few reports surfaced concerning some of his coaches and people surrounding him I’m not so sure I feel that way anymore.
I’m starting to lean toward having Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and the rest of the “A-Team” swoop into Story Oskal in Russia on some Black Ops mission, and whisk away Fedor and his family in order to get them out of the clutches of M-1 Global.
Taken individually over the past few days some of the stories were more interesting than anything, but now that Brent Brookhouse at BloodyElbow.com has put together a few of them and now I’m starting to get that bad “Oompa Loompa” feeling about the people surrounding the Russian fighter.
Earlier today we reported that one of Fedor’s coaches Vladimir Voronov was laying the blame for the loss to Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva over the use of “forbidden psychological technology.” Basically he was saying Silva’s camp used psychics to mess with Fedor’s head. Which is comedic on it’s own but you start adding to the oddity of the claim it just becomes disturbing.
Now M-1 Global Director of Operations Evgeni Kogan has come on Twitter (@evgenikogan) to say that Voronov was making a joke, but this was all refuted by a commenter at ValeTudo.ru.
In regards to Kogan’s “lost in translation tweet”, I can assure you guys, there is NOTHING lost in translation. That is exactly what Voronov said in Russian.
This sparked a BIG debate on all Russian MMA forums, cause people call him nuts now.
More that that, Kogan wasn’t even there when Voronov said it, he was in Holland, and Voronov was in the Moscow’s airport. M-1 is trying to put some damage control crap, but those are Voronov’s words, nothing was “lost” or misinterpreted.
Props to BloodyElbow.com again for the quote.
Then another coach, Alexander Michkov, this one spoke after the loss, comes out to imply that Silva must have been on steroids because he put on 10 KG (just over 22 lbs for those of you who can’t convert) after the weigh-ins.
Think about it, how can the normal human-being gain 10 kg in 24 hours? There is something fishy here.
Sorry to burst your bubble Michkov but I can give you two examples of fighters who dropped 20 lbs for their last fights, Vitor Belfort and Jake Shields, and those guys are middleweights. It’s probably nothing for “Bigfoot” to drop 20 lbs for a fight considering the man weights 280-290 lbs for a fight and likely walks around at 300-310 between fights.
Now I wish I had links to more of what I’ve read over the past few days but I don’t so I’ll just have to wing it.
Fedor is apparently now on Twitter, but it’s actually not him that posts the Tweets, it’s someone who posts in Russian for him. I don’t know about you but I definitely see a form of control here, you can’t even be sure that whats being posted is even what he said.
Now staying with that train of thought, there is some discrepancy between what Fedor said on the microphone after his loss to Silva, and what the translator told everyone in English. I don’t speak Russian so I don’t know but basically Fedor said he was retiring and the translator said he’d think about retiring.
This isn’t the first time her translations have come up suspect, and again I wish I could provide you with the links rather than simply rumor and conjecture. But I get the feeling that M-1 is paying her to clean up whatever Fedor has to say if it doesn’t coincide with M-1’s viewpoint.
Throw on top of all of this the games that M-1’s Vadim Finkelstein has been playing by renegotiating contracts, playing Strikeforce off of the UFC after the fall of Affliction, those clouds surrounding the promotion are starting to look very dark indeed.
Fedor has said many times that he just wants to fight whoever is put in front of him, while Vadim has come up with excuses for him not too until he’s squeezed the most out of whoever it is trying to put the fighter into the ring. It certainly seems that Fedor’s personal interests are being put on the back burner rather than in the drivers seat.
Overall it certainly appears that M-1 has seen their ‘Golden Goose’ lay it’s last Golden Egg but they can’t let that happen, they’ve got their own mma promotion to bolster, I’m certain a number of fancy do-dads to pay for, and a very large (and crazy it would appear) entourage to maintain.
I’m not sure how much is rumor and how much is truth but I don’t think anyone in the Western world will take M-1 Global serious any longer.