I’ve been a strong supported of Fedor Emelianenko for as long as I’ve known of him. He has always been everyone’s little secret. The casual fan would know Roger Huerta and Micheal Bisping but the die hard fans knew of the great Fedor. We thought we were the only ones who knew about him. How he could never be beaten. How he would fight men 50 lbs heavier and dispose of them in minutes. Fedor was the man. Fedor was King. But Fedor, as of today you are no longer number one.
UFC President Dana White may be right in his assessment of Emelianenko. He says Fedor can’t be considered number 1 because he doesn’t fight the best fighters consistently. And you know what? He is right.
Something that is rarely brought up is the fact that Fedor’s chances of one day losing are far greater if he fights the best in the world each time out. But he simpley doesn’t. Georges St. Pierre does this, Miguel Torres does this. There is no question BJ Penn has done this.
Fedor’s fight schedule is the following: Tomato Can, Average Fighter, Good fighter. Repeat. This would be like GSP doing the following:
Tommy Speer, Kevin Burns, Josh Koshceck then maybe back to Drew Fickett. It would look ridiculous, but also increase his odds of never losing. Emelianenko has technically never lost, but if his last 8 fights were against the number 2 opponent in the world then would he still be? If he had fought Josh Barnett, Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir instead of Zulu, Matt Lindland and Hong Man Choi would he still be undefeated?
Fedor is going to fight sub par competition in Strikeforce. Not talking anything away from these guys, but Brett Rogers? He is barely a top 10 Heavyweight and has all of 10 fights. Fabricio Werdum? Another decent fighter, but he was knocked silly in his last fight in the UFC and will now face journeyman Mike Kyle August 15th. Mike Kyle to Fedor? It doesn’t make sense.
The fights for Fedor in Strikeforce are endless, but the competition is not. The odds of him losing would be greatly increased if he fought the next best challenger every time out. St. Pierre, Penn and Torres all do this and have for years. Fedor? Not a chance.
And until Fedor signs a contract to consistently fight the best heavyweights in the world, his stock will continue to drop. If he should lose any of those mid tier fights, it will plummet.
While the rest of the fighters on the top 5 pound for pound list are off fighting the number 2 challenger time and time again, Emelianenko is setting himself up to fight very average fighters.
It appears as though our little secret is finally getting exposed.
