No one wants to say goodbye to legends, even though Father Time
dictates that we must.
Fedor
Emelianenko will bid farewell to the mixed martial arts world
when he challenges
Ryan Bader
for the undisputed
Bellator
MMA heavyweight championship in the
Bellator 290 headliner on Saturday at The Forum in Inglewood,
California. The two men met once previously, with Bader scoring a
35-second technical knockout a little more than four years ago.
Emelianenko, 46, has since rebounded with back-to-back victories
over
Quinton
Jackson and
Tim Johnson,
setting the stage for his swan song.
As Emelianenko makes his way towards his five-round showdown with
Bader and tries to leave the sport as a champion, here are five
things you might not know about him:
1. He was raised under the hammer and sickle.
Emelianenko was born in Rubizhne, Ukraine, in what was then the
Soviet Union on Sept. 28, 1976. His family moved to Stary Oskol,
Russia—roughly 400 miles south of Moscow—when he was still a
toddler. Emelianenko resides and trains there to this day.
2. His competitive exploits extend beyond mixed martial
arts.
“The Last Emperor” is a four-time world champion on combat sambo.
Emelianenko struck gold inside the World Combat Sambo Federation in
2002 and inside the International Federation of Amateur Sambo in
2002, 2005 and 2007.
3. Staying power fuels his historic profile.
Emelianenko made his professional mixed martial arts debut at the
age of 23 when he submitted
Martin
Lazarov with a first-round guillotine choke at a Rings event on
May 21, 2000. He has since posted wins in three different decades:
the 2000s, the 2010s and the 2020s. By the time Emelianenko
rematches Bader, he will have been an active mixed martial artist
for a remarkable 8,294 days.
4. He ruled with iron fists.
The Vladimir Voronov protégé was one of only two heavyweight
titleholders in
Pride Fighting Championships history.
Antonio
Rodrigo Nogueira—a man Emelianenko decisively defeated
twice—was the other. The Russian laid claim to the title with a
unanimous decision over Nogueira at Pride 25 on March 16, 2003,
retained it on four occasions and remained in possession of it
until the organization was shuttered in 2007.
5. His travels have been surprisingly limited.
Despite the scope and scale of his stardom, Emelianenko has only
fought in four different countries: Russia, Japan, Lithuania and
the United States. He has spent the majority of his career in The
Land of the Rising Sun, where he has pieced together 25-1 record
with one no contest across his 27 appearances.