July 30th is set to be one of the biggest nights in mixed martial arts history as the Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Dan Henderson moves up to heavyweight for one night to fight former Pride champion Fedor Emelianenko.
Both fighters are already legends of the sport, but their careers have been trending in very different directions over the past year. While Henderson has won back-to-back fights over Babalu Sobral and Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante while winning his title, major chinks have been formed in Emelianenko’s once thought to be impenetrable armor. “The Last Emperor” has lost back-to-back fights to Fabricio Werdum and Antonio Silva.
Following his most recent loss to Silva, Emelianenko spoke candidly in the post-fight interview about the possibility of calling an end to his legendary career and officially retiring. It was obvious from the look on his face that he felt not only physically defeated, but perhaps even mentally defeated by Big Foot.
We now know that Fedor did not retire after the loss and will instead by fighting Dan Henderson later this summer, but the big question regarding his future after this dream fight continues to be a dark cloud overhead.
As a 34-year old former Pride Heavyweight Champion, Fedor Emelianenko has really done it all in the sport. In addition to holding that title for over four years, Emelianenko also added a victory as the Pride Heavyweight Grand Prix champion in 2004. He was ranked as the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world for the better part of a decade, even while the UFC grew into the biggest mixed martial arts organization in the world.
During that time, there was essentially no debate whatsoever, other than from UFC President Dana White of course, that Emelianenko was the best heavyweight fighter on the planet.
But when Pride closed, Fedor found himself in a very weird position. His management at M1 Global was unable to come to an agreement with the UFC and he instead elected to compete for the upstart Affliction promotion where he earned the WAMMA heavyweight championship. During his time in Affliction, Emelianenko destroyed two former UFC heavyweight champions, Andrei Arlovski and Tim Sylvia, in back-to-back fights.
Then things changed.
When Affliction closed its doors as a mixed martial arts organization, Emelianenko signed with Strikeforce. Things wouldn’t have been much different for the champion as he was still the top dog in the heavyweight division, but there was one difference that concerned a lot of experts.
Fedor had spent his entire career fighting in a ring, but the move to Strikeforce meant that he would now be fighting in a cage.
Other fighters had made a successful transition from one to the other in the past, but many had also struggled mightily not only with the scenery change, but also with the various rule changes.
It was in his first fight for Strikeforce that we got a glimpse of Fedor’s slide down as the No. 1 ranked heavyweight in the world. Emelianenko fought up-and-coming undefeated heavyweight prospect Brett Rogers in that first bout. While he ended up securing the victory with a violent knockout, it was his sketchy performance early in the fight that drew critics.
Those critics were proven right when tragedy struck in Fedor’s next fight against Fabricio Werdum. After landing what appeared to be a crushing punch early in the first round, Fedor quickly jumped into Werdum’s guard and looked to finish the fight with ground-and-pound.
According to Werdum, though, it was all a trap and the once perceived-to-be unbeatable Emelianenko fell for it hook, line and sinker. Just 1:09 into the first round, Werdum submitted the champion with a combination triangle-armbar.
The MMA world looked on in shock.
Still, most of us chalked the loss up to a simple lapse in judgment, rather than a physical inability. We assumed he would bounce back better than ever in his next fight, which ended up being a quarterfinals fight against Antonio “Big Foot” Silva in the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament.
But we were wrong.
Big Foot looked like a big brother beating up on his little brother has he completely crushed our hero, causing a doctor’s stoppage between the second and third rounds after two punishing rounds in which Fedor looked completely outmatched. The retirement talk began immediately as the sadness was evident on the champion’s face.
Now entering the 35th professional fight of his career, the days may be coming to an end for the man appropriately nicknamed “The Last Emperor.”
Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson will be the first time in a very long while that Emelianenko will actually head into the fight as the larger man. Henderson, the Strikeforce light heavyweight champion, has competed as a middleweight as recently as April 2010 when he lost a tough fight to Jake Shields.
While Fedor’s losses to Werdum and Silva would likely be overlooked due to the “sneaky” victory Werdum achieved and the massive size advantage Silva had, a loss to “Hollywood” Henderson would mean three straight and would not be so easily dismissed by the MMA community. Even though Henderson is one of the best fighters of all-time, he is actually six years the elder of Emelianenko and will likely be conceding somewhere between 10-to-15 pounds in the fight.
Given that Fedor has done essentially everything there is to do in the sport other than fight for the UFC, it has essentially come down to love for the sport that has kept him around even this long. He has money to live very comfortably, he still has his health and his name is already etched in stone as perhaps the greatest fighter in the history of the sport.
A victory over Henderson could help propel Fedor back into the spotlight and another big money fight, but a loss will begin talks very similar to what happened to Chuck Liddell when he was nearing retirement. Is he too old? Is his head still in the game? Is he training hard enough? Was he ever as good as we were told?
Fedor Emelianenko has always been a tough person to gauge emotions from. Even in some of the biggest fights ever, he has always retained that almost eerily melancholy look on his face.
But he is still human. He has flaws, he has weaknesses and contrary to popular opinion, he has emotion.
That’s why I believe that if he does fall in this fight with Dan Henderson, it will be the last time we ever see Fedor Emelianenko in a mixed martial arts fight. It will be sad to see him go, but in the end, it will be the right decision for his health, his future and his legacy.
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