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Fedor Emelianenko

Well, it took awhile, but we got here: It's time to talk about Fedor Emelianenko. Indisputably one of the greatest fighters of all time, probably one of the most important fighters of all time, and somehow, simultaneously one of the biggest What Ifs of all time. There's this problem with success: When you don't achieve much of it it's very easy to look warmly on your accomplishments, but the more you achieve, the more questions you can ask--how much time did you waste, what opportunities did you squander, how much MORE could you have achieved if you'd done things differently. Fedor was undefeated for a decade. He was Pride's heavyweight champion for most of its existence. He beat a score of world champions and made it look easy. He's one of the biggest legends in the sport.

And that makes the questions he left unanswered absolutely heartbreaking.

Fedor was one of the best in the world the moment he stepped into the ring. A RINGS-trained member of the Russian Top Team and a Sambo specialist, he walked into RINGS in the year 2000 and was an immediate threat to everyone he faced. He would have been a finalist in the 2000 King of Kings tournament had he not been cut by an illegal elbow from Tsuyoshi Kohsaka--which still meant he lost, because he couldn't continue in the tournament and someone had to. It was his only loss for the next ten years. He was 10-1 by the time he entered Pride in 2002, and he would blaze its greatest legacy, wresting the heavyweight championship from Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in his third fight with the organization and going 17-0 during his time there. It's one of the most impressive feats MMA has seen.

Unfortunately, it's not without its holes. Even though Fedor had 12 fights within Pride after winning the title he only defended it three times. There were a number of top heavyweights in Pride during Fedor's reign--Sergei Kharitonov, Josh Barnett, Ricco Rodriguez, Fabricio Werdum--that he never fought. Some say it was bad timing, some say he and his management refused to fight them, but it left a bad taste in some fans' mouths to see Fedor instead take fights with people like Yuji Nagata, Gary Goodridge and the 400-pound freakshow Zuluzinho. Reportedly, the Fedor/Cro-Cop fight took a full year of negotiations. Apocryphally, Fedor's team staunchly refused to let him fight Bob Sapp, of all people.

And that's the issue that takes us to the elephant in the room: Pride folded and Fedor, the best in the world, was the only top heavyweight who never migrated to the UFC. He eventually took up with the short-lived Affliction and later became the centerpiece of top competitor Strikeforce, but that would also be the end of his time on top: Strikeforce put him against top competition back to back and it finally felled him, as he went from undefeated for a decade to getting stopped three times in a row--by Fabricio Werdum, Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva, and most absurdly, suffering the first real knockout of his career against career middleweight Dan Henderson. It was the end of the line, and a clear sign to retire.

In something of an unintentional reinforcement of complaints about his career, he didn't. He instead went back to Russia and Japan, fought three unranked fighters for easy vanity wins, and THEN retired. And then came back three years later for a depressing run that's seen him beat a 2-0 kickboxer, get essentially knocked out by and yet still win a terrible hometown decision against light-heavyweight journeyman Fabio Maldonado, and get knocked out--this time, unquestionably--by UFC washout Matt Mitrone. He says he's not done, but he seems really, thoroughly done.

And that's a shame. It's a shame that one of the greatest careers in the history of the sport can still be riddled with question marks. It's a shame that one of the most durable, intelligent, well-rounded fighters in mixed martial arts never tested himself against his peers in the UFC. It's a shame that his decline seems directly linked to not staying sharp against the best of the best.

It doesn't make him not amazing. It doesn't make him any less Pride's greatest fighter, or any less deserving of his acolades and his legend. It's because of that very legend that there's such an acute sense of what could have been.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride 21 vs Schilt / Affliction: Day of Reckoning vs Arlovski / Strikeforce vs Rogers / 2012 Combat Sambo Championships vs Kriger).