mma / Columns

Don’t Be Fooled by Fedor’s Comeback

November 21, 2016 | Posted by Dan Plunkett

Bellator MMA promised a surprise announcement during its broadcast on Saturday night, and to the delight of the live crowd delivered when a familiar sweater emerged onto the stage. Fedor Emelianenko, the greatest heavyweight in the sport’s history, will fight Matt Mitrione on February 18 in San Jose under the Bellator banner – an announcement that had been anticipated since an October 29 report from FloCombat. It is the first bout of a multi-fight agreement between Bellator and Emelianenko.

The signing upends whatever plans the UFC had to bring Emelianenko to their arena, a sight many fans have yearned to see for a decade. The UFC expressed public interest in Emelianenko as recently as the days following his near-defeat at the hands of Fabio Maldonado in June. Clearly, when it comes to Emelianenko, Scott Coker, who previously signed the Russian to his now-defunct Strikeforce promotion in 2009, has the upper hand over the UFC.

Emelianenko enters the thin Bellator heavyweight division as a title contender for a belt that hasn’t had an owner in half a year and hasn’t been contested since April 2014. Don’t let the contender designation or the five fight win streak he carries into Bellator fool you: Emelianenko has long been done as a top level fighter and even the middling heavyweights Bellator has to offer will be too much for the aging great.

It has been seven years to the month since Emelianeko toughed past the larger Brett Rogers on CBS. It marked both the start of his relationship with Strikeforce and, in hindsight, the end of a prime that saw him stand alone atop the heavyweight division for seven years. His follow up fight, a quick submission loss to Fabricio Werdum that snapped his dominant reign, began a surprising three-fight losing streak that included a brutal beating from Antonio Silva and a knockout courtesy of Dan Henderson.

Following the loss to Henderson, Strikeforce, (which Zuffa controlled by this point) cut Emelianenko and his large price tag. Despite indications of retirement that followed the Antonio Silva fight, he stayed active in his post-Strikeforce days. Whether by design or necessity, the quality of his competition dropped sharply, and he recorded there consecutive wins before declaring his retirement in June 2012.

Emelianenko rescinded his retirement in 2015, returning to fight on New Year’s Even for Rizin in Japan. His opponent, Jaideep Singh, a threatening kickboxer but novice MMA fighter, posed only the smallest of threats and was quickly dispatched. Up to this point, it was difficult to ascertain where Emelianenko stood. Could he have slowed the decline that brought losses in Strikeforce and retained the ability to beat some top heavyweights? Or, had his opponent selection covered for additional decline?

That answer came in June, three months before Emelianenko’s 40th birthday, when he faced Fabio Maldonado. An undefeated low level pro boxer that went on to record a 5-5 record in UFC’s light heavyweight division, Maldonado was noted more for his toughness more than his hands. Throughout his career, Emelianenko met many opponents for whom toughness was considered among their best traits, but his skill and speed bludgeoned their toughness every time.

As Emelianenko’s career entered its waning phase, his style began to regress into more of a headhunter. At first, his speed and power were enough to overcome the technical deficiencies he increasingly deployed with this style – the low hands, the wide looping punches with his chin in the air. However, by the time he got to Maldonado, his physical decline had made those errors critical. He aggressively pursued Maldonado early on, but his swarming attack was countered by a tight right-left combination that sent Emelianenko crashing face-first to the mat. Maldonado pounced, delivering a savage beating that the vast majority of officials would have stopped.

Admirably, Emelianenko did recover to the point that he won the final two rounds of the fight, but barely surviving and squeaking past a fighter of Maldonado’s caliber (not getting into the controversy about the decision itself) bodes poorly for a venture into Bellator’s heavyweight division.

The Bellator heavyweight division does not feature any actively great fighters, but has a small set of very solid heavyweights that would be more likely to dish out a beating to Emelianenko than receive one. Matt Mitrione is in that group, which makes the matchmaking decision a puzzling one when also considering Bellator’s multi-fight pact with Emelianenko. There are fights for Emelianenko in Bellator that are both more lucrative and less dangerous than Mitrione. Emelianenko will always be a star and draw at some level, but he’s much more valuable after an impressive performance than after a bad loss. The Mitrione fight risks a second consecutive bad performance from Emelianenko, which would turn off fans who have no desire to see a slow, sad end to a legend’s career.

Of course, Emelianenko has a chance against Mitrione. Although his speed has declined, his hands are by no means heavyweight slow, and his punches likely have some power left. He could catch Mitrione, perhaps even in a submission, but unless matched safely afterward, it will only delay an inevitable bad loss.

Time has long since pressed its brakes to slow Emelianenko. He can no longer compete with heavyweights at a high level, and as the Maldonado fight showed, many light heavyweights are out of the question as well. As February 19 draws near, fight breakdowns will details about what Mitrione is and even more about what Emelianenko was. Fighting is not kind to the was.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.

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Fedor Emelianenko, Dan Plunkett