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No.  Never.   Thanks for coming out.  
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Feb 17, 2023 18:59
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Alright, let's talk about it. The last time we had a Fedorthread it was created by a lunatic and lasted 122 pages across three and a half years. Now, mercifully, the story is over, and it is time for all of us to write its conclusion. Fedor Emelianenko is the most famous, most prominent mixed martial artist to never compete in the UFC. He spent the first decade of his career virtually undefeated, with the "virtually" coming courtesy of a cut stoppage after an elbow, which was technically illegal, but it was Rings, it was a tournament, and his opponent was Japanese hero Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, so they rolled with it. He won Pride's heavyweight championship in 2003 by battering the consensus #1 in Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and remained Pride's undefeated heavyweight champion until its death in 2007. He beat Nogueira again in a rematch, he beat former champion Mark Coleman twice, he beat Mirko Cro-Cop in one of the biggest fights in Japanese MMA history, and after Pride folded, he beat UFC champions Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski in one round apiece before finally succumbing to age and losing. His mixture of skill and speed was unmatched at heavyweight in his prime and it's a testament to his skills that he was the top of the world even undersized and was still beating ranked heavyweights at 45. He's the best there ever was.  Fedor Emelianenko is the most overrated mixed martial artist in the sport. His path to the championship was paved over middleweights, aging veterans and guys like Semmy Schilt that other fighters had already defeated in more impressive fashion. He may have held the Pride title for half a decade, but in twelve subsequent fights in the company he only actually defended it four times. Moreover, he ducked multiple top contenders in the process, never fighting top Pride star Josh Barnett, former training partner turned rival Sergei Kharitonov or even top middleweight Shogun Rua. He turned down a rematch against Cro-Cop and refused to fight Bob Sapp, he had to repeatedly hold the ropes to beat Matt Lindland, he was getting touched up by Andrei Arlovski and Brett "Worse than The Manic Hispanic Eddie Sanchez" Rogers before they walked facefirst into big right hands, and after getting knocked out by UFC washout Fábio Maldonado to the point that the Russian commentator was screaming for the fight to be stopped, he somehow still won a decision from the Russian MMA federation of which he was President. He's the sport's biggest non-Irish hype job, his fall was the product of his own hubris, and it's good he's gone.  Fedor Emelianenko is one of the most profoundly irritating social phenomenons mixed martial arts has ever seen. What should have been a slam dunk of a legacy--an extremely talented fighter who was telling the UFC to go gently caress itself before it was cool--is instead a huge loving quagmire of bullshit. On one end of the spectrum you have the internet being absolutely insufferable about him for years, with endless memes about Fedor's cyborg brain or his stupid loving sweaters all wrapped around the insistence that he's better than everyone and would have easily beaten every UFC champion of the 21st century. On the other, you have the actual bad poo poo, like his professional relationship with neo-nazi fighter Roman Zentsov, or the time he and his manager intimated that he beat Arlovski because Arlovski had "Slavic heart and a Slavic soul," or his instrumental role as part of Vladimir Putin's self-propagandizing about being an icon of badass masculinity. His fans would defend him by pointing out that it was only the people around him doing those things while ignoring that Fedor continued to surround himself with those people. His management were racists, his brother was a rapist, and he was lending his voice to Russian propaganda as recently as last year.  Fedor Emelianenko could have been the best fighter of all time. Instead he got squashed by Ryan Bader twice. I'm deeply glad I got to see his entire career unfold, I loved watching him fight once upon a time, and his downfall was so gratifyingly perfect that I could not have asked for anything more save, maybe, getting submitted by Frank Mir. I understand our fanbase's love for him but watching the internet fall all over itself one last time to worship him was embarrassing and I'm glad he's gone. Please do not come back. Share your Fedor thoughts so we, together, can write the final word on his legacy.
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Feb 17, 2023 19:00
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Fedor was a top 10 heavyweight in the world in his prime. He was maybe even a top 5 heavyweight. I am highly doubtful he was ever the best in the world in the early 2000s and anyone who thinks he is the greatest of all time belongs in some sort of longterm mental health care facility after getting their rear end beat by Batman and/or Robin, or perhaps Batgirl depending on circumstances.
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Feb 17, 2023 19:05
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CarlCX posted:Now, mercifully, the story is over, and it is time for all of us to write its conclusion. Oh you sweet summer child.
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Feb 17, 2023 19:28
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Fedor was the best heavyweight fighter in MMA history, but that isn't saying much.
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Feb 17, 2023 20:46
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drat the post where FD banned socrates
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Feb 17, 2023 23:09
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Fedor was good because seeing a weird stoic russian get ragdolled by Randleman is what got me into mma
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Feb 17, 2023 23:29
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I liked the Fedor entry on the old Cracked article about MMA revenge
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Feb 17, 2023 23:39
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He's like Babe Ruth. Was dominant in his day but his opponents were mostly dudes who had 2nd jobs to get by and he didnt face a lot of the best players/fighters because they were in a separate organization.
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Feb 17, 2023 23:39
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It's been a while since I stared at his record but if Fedor wasn't the best Heavyweight for at least some parts of the 2000s then who were the #1 for the decade? Because Heavyweight MMA was largely a wasteland as far as talent goes. Probably still is but I'm not equipped to comment. I wish the Barnett fight in Affliction had happened, but Josh forgot he was fighting in America rather than Japan, whoops. Undoubtedly Fedor had a warranted rep for beating up cans, although I don't know if I can hold that against him because that's part of why I enjoyed Pride, they appealed to the reptilian brain with matches that were sure to have a finish. If you look at the Heavyweight world at the start of 2005, who is above Fedor? He's just coming off a NYE win over Nogueira in the Heavyweight Grand Prix final. The UFC champion is Mir (? although he either has just been is or is about to be stripped of the title from his bike crash). Mir's '04 had him beat Tim Sylvia & Wes Sims, Fedor beat Big Nog, Mark Coleman, Kevin Randleman & Naoya Ogawa. Coleman was passed it, Sims never was, Sylvia was a weird dude who probably doesn't get his due historically, Ogawa was 6-0 at the time of the fight but his best win at this stage is what, Stefan Leko who ended his MMA career 0-3? Or maybe it's 9-7 Gary Goodridge in his debut, who had already been lapped by the rapid improvements in the sport from the beginning to this point. Regardless, the point is that Sylvia, Nogueira & Randleman are probably the only notable wins of the 6, & then it's Nog -> Sylvia and then a drop off to Randleman. Arlovski is about to become UFC champion but his only '04 result was a win over Cabbage, who may very well have been a top 25 HW at the time but if he was that's more an indictment on the strength of the division than a compliment to him. So other than that who else is there? Cro Cop had a good 2004, there's a loss to Randleman but also 7 wins, including getting his win back over Kevin Randleman and beating both Barnett & Fedor's rapist brother. Don't think Kharitonov is in the discussion yet, Barnett spent most of the year on the sidelines with a shoulder injury got in the loss to Cro Cop. Randy Couture is a Light Heavyweight. Pedro Rizzo doesn't fight at all in 2004. Heath Herring goes 3-1, but that loss is the only quality fight unless I'm forgetting how good Gan McGee was. In conclusion, I think Fedor was very good, I think he was the best Heavyweight fighter for at least sometime, I'm not going to go out on a limb & say from X to X because I am a coward, but the Pride schedule & some misfortune with injuries etc also don't necessarily help his case, between Barnett's suspension (& previous attempts to make the fight like at Shockwave '06), Fedor missing the Absolute GP in 2006, & obviously the can crushing, & the few & far between title defences. The Brett Rogers fight was a sure fire sign that the decline had begun & then it got sad from there. But then it always gets sad, that's sort of the nature of combat sports, so few guys don't have a depressing ending to their career. Well, not really that depressing with Fedor's extracurricular poo poo being a reasonable black mark against him as a human being, but it's MMA, you can count on 2 hands the number of fighters that don't have black marks against them, be it racism, domestic abuse, rape, murder, allowing themselves to be used as patsies for pathetic leaders trying to give themselves a strong man aura. It's a loving depressing sport & part of why I dropped off from watching it. I think you could make a case for him of being the best Heavyweight of the 2000s, I don't think I would make it myself but at least partially that's because I'd have to do more research than I'm willing to for a dumb argument about a sport I've not watched in 6 or so years. And also historically the best in a decade that covers such rapid advancement in the sport is extremely hard to quantify, & on top of that I haven't actually watched any of these fights in the best part of a decade. Best of all time? Nah, I don't think so. The sport is so far past Fedor, if you took peak Fedor through a time portal & dropped him in 2023 he'll still get wins because it's a division that will never be deep because there are so many better paying sports for big strong athletes, but he'd get beaten by the top guys. Despite his rep he was never actually unbeatable, Randleman came oh so close after all. But could he be a top 25 guy? I'm looking at the current Fight Matrix ranking & I see Phil de Fries & Cheick Kongo are in it & can't help think that unless they have both rapidly improved (which considering Kongo's age seems unlikely) '04/05 Fedor could hang amongst them. Although this is also a stupid hypothetical so  As an aside, it's always been slightly weird to me that his name has always been transliterated as Fedor rather than Fyodor, especially considering the most famous Фёдор was Fyodor Dostoyevsky. But that's just the part of me that studied Russian for a little while. (And yes, Fedor fans, especially the ones still chirping his relevancy in the 2010s, are almost as insufferable as the worst sort of McGregor fans)
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Feb 17, 2023 23:57
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Bluedeanie posted:Fedor was a top 10 heavyweight in the world in his prime. He was maybe even a top 5 heavyweight. I am highly doubtful he was ever the best in the world in the early 2000s and anyone who thinks he is the greatest of all time belongs in some sort of longterm mental health care facility after getting their rear end beat by Batman and/or Robin, or perhaps Batgirl depending on circumstances. I'm with you on the rest, but I do think, in fairness, there's an argument to be made for Fedor being the best heavyweight of the 2000s. If you're taking the MMA world from 2000-2009, your top heavyweight options are, like,
So in terms of "could Barnett/Sergei/a less silly Andrei have beaten Fedor" the answer is obviously yes, but in terms of actual accomplishments, I do think it's hard to beat Fedor for that period of heavyweight.
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Feb 18, 2023 00:01
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I started at Very Good but moved to Best of the 2000s because I don't see anyone else with a better case. Of course he could have fought more top talent in the 2000s, but he won the fights he had and it's not like the others had conclusively run through the division. I loved Pride back in the day and can see how people got caught up in the mania of thinking Fedor was an unstoppable cyborg, but too many heavyweights these days could beat peak Fedor and too many overall fighters have better longevity and more wins over top competition. Few since have been able to have that special mystique though.
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Feb 18, 2023 00:21
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I unironically think Mir could have beaten Fedor. Like, not guaranteed to win by any means, but that's because of Mir, not Fedor.
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Feb 18, 2023 01:48
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Bluedeanie posted:Fedor was a top 10 heavyweight in the world in his prime. He was maybe even a top 5 heavyweight. I am highly doubtful he was ever the best in the world in the early 2000s and anyone who thinks he is the greatest of all time belongs in some sort of longterm mental health care facility after getting their rear end beat by Batman and/or Robin, or perhaps Batgirl depending on circumstances. I mean, I guess it's not that different from many fighters that had a period of dominance in their division in their prime - he had a window where he was among the upper echelon and the sport eventually caught up to, and the surpassed him. It's a story as old as time, really. It just so happens that he's also a lovely person surrounding himself with lovely people, and an example of the internet's inability to consider nuance, where everything is either shittiest lovely poo poo that ever got shat out onto creation by the god of poo poo, or the greatest great that ever greated in the history of greatness, birthed by the very greatest god of greatness itself with absolutely no middle ground. edogawa rando fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 02:08
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quote:“We believe that forbidden psychological technology was used… It seems to us that not everything was right, and that certain technologies were used. Not ones that could be seen by the naked eye, but psychological technologies that worked on both fighters at a distance. Vladimir Voronov, also added that Fedor looked “depressed” while Silva appeared to glow from the overflowing of energy. His main suspect was anyone capable of both blocking and transferring energy from one person to another.
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Feb 18, 2023 02:51
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We got robbed of the answer to the question of the Best HeavyweightTM because of Dana's ego, the Russian mafia and crooked Pride match making. I do think that some of the guys listed above might have beaten prime Fedor but it's just an interesting intellectual exercise now. I do recall my wife being concerned because I started crying while I was laughing so hard when Werdum beat him.
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Feb 18, 2023 05:25
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Fedor is a great example of two things: 1. You can only beat who is in front of you 2. To humans: The first one you liked is the best one of the type. Like a Final Fantasy game, generally speaking, the first you played is often the one you like best. This isn't a universal truth but it trends heavily this way. This changes the more of a fan and willing to inform yourself of history you become. Fedor's opponents, barring a few, were journeymen in a fledgling sport. I consider his first loss legitimate. It wasn't an intentional elbow and these things happen and the tourney needed a winner. Better head movement would have dodged the strike fully. Of the journeymen, he was one of a couple (Crocop, Arlovski too?) who had an good athlete's calibre and proper martial artist skills and not a big dude swinging leather. It's not a coincidence that when the sport aged and people begun to get into it who could dedicate the time to become skilled, dedicated fighters, Fedor started losing and losing badly. The concept of GOAT is stupid. There are few fighters who are the GOATs who would be able to compete with the best of the next couple of generations, it's they way sport works. (GSP, Volk?) Fedor might have been the best heavyweight on earth in his era, but his era was like 3 years of bums.
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Feb 18, 2023 08:49
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Also the aspect of "I don't want to look dumb but people who I think know more than me about this say this so I better say it too *looks dumb for saying it to anyone who knows the subject*"
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Feb 18, 2023 08:53
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Bluedeanie posted:I unironically think Mir could have beaten Fedor. Like, not guaranteed to win by any means, but that's because of Mir, not Fedor. mir would've crushed him from top position but i don't think he would've been able to get fedor to the ground and he would've folded up like an accordion to fedor's punches or ground and pound if he was on bottom. like yeah maybe mir lands a perfect left hook, because he was a pretty good boxer when he was in the zone. but let's not forget that this is frank mir, the truest embodiment of the MMA heavyweight sprint to surrender mentality ever to exist. maybe tied with overeem. i think fedor was definitely the best heavyweight of the 2000's, if he would've come to the UFC after pride folded i think he would have cleaned up the bum rear end UFC heavyweights of that time, probably. maybe couture would've improbably beat him somehow. though in some alternate timeline where he went to the ufc and beat couture and became champ, fedor would've 100% lost to lesnar imo and maybe carwin and maaaaaaybe overeem depending on how quickly they'd get into the clinch. fedor never fixed his weakness against positional control from big loving dudes and i think lesnar would've double legged and herring'd him, carwin might have turned him to mush against the cage ala mir, overeem could've kneed and tripped him from the clinch and then smashed him from top position but actually he'd probably get clipped at some point and get murdered while jogging in the opposite direction. cain and JDS would've both been too young, too fast, too tough, too athletic, etc. for him at the point where they challenged for the belts. if he fought barnett in pride i think he would've lost that too. sergei probably would've been armbarred but it would have been a cool fight and he's also fuckin massive. i've definitely softened on fedor over the years, since his annoying weebo fans aren't really around anymore and greatest heavyweight is one of the most Such Great Heights things ever. watching his old fights is a lot of fun.
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Feb 18, 2023 10:33
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fedor was very good at kicking cans, and the occasional actual good fighter when he was allowed to fight them. but the best? thats cro cop. because he entertained me the most. and thats what matters
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Feb 18, 2023 11:00
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Paper Lion posted:fedor was very good at kicking cans, and the occasional actual good fighter when he was allowed to fight them. but the best? thats cro cop. because he entertained me the most. and thats what matters
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Feb 18, 2023 14:11
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Foul Fowl posted:mir would've crushed him from top position but i don't think he would've been able to get fedor to the ground and he would've folded up like an accordion to fedor's punches or ground and pound if he was on bottom. like yeah maybe mir lands a perfect left hook, because he was a pretty good boxer when he was in the zone. but let's not forget that this is frank mir, the truest embodiment of the MMA heavyweight sprint to surrender mentality ever to exist. maybe tied with overeem. Carwin was undefeated in the 2000s while we all know Fedor rightfully lost to a light heavyweight during that period. The Engineer is clearly the best of the aughts. Fedor was the best heavyweight from 2003-2009. It was a lot closer than the Fedor heads want you to believe, because while he was 2-0-0-1 vs Nog, that 1 was one where Nog was doing very well. Then when started losing he was "over the hill" despite being basically the same age as the guys he lost to. MassRafTer fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 17:23
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Any of the UFC HW champs from Cain onwards would 100% have destroyed Fedor with ease, and of course, one did. Lesnar is a tougher pick for me because he wasn't a great puncher or great with his ground and pound, Carwin was absolute poo poo at ground and pound but if he landed clean, people died. Those two are closer fights. Randy Couture was probably too small.
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Feb 19, 2023 08:16
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MassRafTer posted:Carwin was undefeated in the 2000s while we all know Fedor rightfully lost to a light heavyweight during that period. The Engineer is clearly the best of the aughts. the true mythical GOAT fighter is carwin but with a working back
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Feb 19, 2023 10:24
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Josuke Higashikata posted:Any of the UFC HW champs from Cain onwards would 100% have destroyed Fedor with ease, and of course, one did. The real challenge is Cain vs Fedor at altitude. All Heavyweight fights should be held in La Paz.
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Feb 19, 2023 10:55
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the bruce lee one inch punch exists, but you have to throw it with no technique and be a 300lbs man with fists too big for the UFC gloves
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Feb 19, 2023 11:09
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lol Carwin absolutely did not even have to land clean. I think it was against gonzaga that he just sorta grazes the top of the head and it's a full sleep KO
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Feb 19, 2023 16:00
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Josuke Higashikata posted:Any of the UFC HW champs from Cain onwards would 100% have destroyed Fedor with ease, and of course, one did. I don't think handy was too small. He doesn't hit as hard as hendo, but he's basically the same size and a better wrestler. I don't think there would have been a massive visible size difference. :format(jpeg)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/37095632/couture_fedor_affliction1.0.jpg) There are a lot of ways Fedor loses that fight. It would have been competitive. Lesnar puts him on his rear end and pitter pats him like he did to Mark Hunt for the duration of the fight.
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Feb 19, 2023 16:57
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Brock vs Carwin was a bizarrely interesting fight. Brock did his usual "I got punched, I will now flee in terror and fall down" thing, then proceeded to get the stuffing punched out of his head for like a minute. After which he smiled, kicked Carwin in the rear end, got punched some more and eventually Carwin gassed himself out and lost
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Feb 19, 2023 17:07
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The Carwin fight is, weirdly, the most legitimizing of Brock's career. For all the memes about Brock being unable to take a punch, a top ballot candidate for hardest heavyweight hitter ever in Carwin (it's him, Ngannou, Lewis and Hunt), who'd laid out every person he'd so much as touched, hit him in the head 39 times and somehow didn't put him out. Also I personally think Fedor would've smoked contract dispute-era Randy. Randy still got his poo poo broke by Gabriel Gonzaga before he won, he got dropped by the advanced standup techniques of Brock Lesnar and he couldn't handle Nogueira's boxing OR his bottom game. I think he was the beneficiary of an extremely fortunate moment in the UFC's divisional timing.
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Feb 19, 2023 19:20
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Carwin got super excited by dropping/getting on top of Lesnar that all his technique went out of the window and he gassed himself out. I think if Carwin had kept calm and thought about it, Lesnar was going home on a stretcher
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Feb 19, 2023 19:27
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lesnar would hit fedor with the F-5 and that'd be that
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Feb 19, 2023 20:21
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these mentions of gonzaga reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg0l0l9qYAM
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Feb 19, 2023 23:05
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 22:34 |
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CarlCX posted:The Carwin fight is, weirdly, the most legitimizing of Brock's career. For all the memes about Brock being unable to take a punch, a top ballot candidate for hardest heavyweight hitter ever in Carwin (it's him, Ngannou, Lewis and Hunt), who'd laid out every person he'd so much as touched, hit him in the head 39 times and somehow didn't put him out. I compare Brock to Forrest Griffin in that he couldn't take a punch well but he will always stay in the fight anyway. Bad chins but strong enough to not be put down after being hurt.
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Feb 19, 2023 23:43
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