Fedor: In the Twilight of the Last Emperor

Fedor Emelianenko's fall was sudden if you hadn't been watching his fights closely. But if you were a follower of The Last Emperor you had seen his punches getting wilder, you had noticed that all the footage out of his camp was of him boxing and that he never translated it into the ring any more, and you had watched his rounded MMA game atrophy down to swings and infrequent muscled takedowns. His admission that he didn't weight train anymore, believing that wrestling with resisting partners was enough was equally worrying. He surrounded himself with mystics and yes men, wearing a massive cross everywhere he went and spoke of fighting with disregard for the result, ascribing everything to 'God's will'. The fall of Fedor began well before the surprise triangle of Fabricio Werdum.

The Werdum loss was a shocker, but the way Fedor Emelianenko fought in that bout was identical to the flailing way he had fought against Brett Rogers, Andrei Arlovski and even Tim Sylvia. We were a long way removed from the masterful all around martial artist who drubbed Mirko Filipovic and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in a trilogy of fights which can teach any fighter something new about how MMA's elements of style can and should flow into and out of each other. But measured aggression and the search for an entrance had given way to wildly pounding at the gate and hoping it would give way.

There were sparks of the old Emperor in there, even during the streak of losses. When Emelianenko swung wild against Antonio Silva, he looked nothing like the man who had darted in and out against the better grapplers and walked down the best kickboxers, but when Silva had Emelianenko pressed to the fence, was in on his hips, had Emelianenko up on tippy toes out of his base and clinging to a guillotine, and with a sixty plus pound weight advantage still couldn't get Emelianenko down, you were reminded just how much talent Emelianenko had that was being put on the back burner while he threw haymakers and spouted mysticism.

Nothing quite sums up how predictable Fedor was getting as the first meaningful takedown of that bout, and the one which allowed Silva to put the real punishment on Emelianenko. The two came out for round two and Silva knew Fedor would immediately lead with the wild right hand, he'd been doing it to the exclusion of everything else for the entire first round. Silva timed a shot underneath it and immediately took top position. Fedor Emelianenko, a man who used to fight with dipping jabs, leaping left hooks, hand traps, lead uppercuts, thudding low kicks and even the odd oblique kick, was so predictable on the feet that a glacial Antonio Silva shot caught him unawares. That tells you everything you need to know about Emelianenko's decline.

After yet another fight where he came out swinging the right hand and throwing himself off balance each time Fedor suffered the first true knockout of his career. Caught by a right hand from behind by Dan Henderson. As the world and its wife freaked out about Emelianenko losing to an old middleweight, Emelianenko himself seemed to snap out of the daze he was in.

Emelianenko quietly went on a three fight tour before heading into retirement. The three fights were not against stellar competition, and that can make it difficult when you are trying to tell if a fighter's athletic qualities are still there, but from a purely technical standpoint, Emelianenko looked a hundred miles removed from the wildness of the previous few years. Against Jeff Monson, a hugely accomplished grappler but far from his best as an MMA fighter, Emelianenko brought back the thudding low kicks which had always been so overlooked by viewers. Having trained for a good length of time with Ernesto Hoost, Emelianenko understood the importance of a good low kick. One of the peculiarities of Emelianenko's is the way in which he, and to a lesser extent his brother, threw low kicks. Emelianenko's kicks come on a pretty steep upward trajectory with a thrusting of the hips rather than turning them over. Often when Emelianenko kicks it looks as if the leg is extending into the target to quicken the rebound. These diagonal kicks meant Emelianenko was quick to the target, even if he lacked the full body weight pivoting into the blow. They aided him tremendously against Mirko Filipovic and they quickly fractured Jeff Monson's leg.

Against Satoshi Ishii, who went on to have a solid streak of wins, Fedor looked timid and slow in the early going. His stance was squarer than usual. The low kicks were again present, quick to the mark and taking Ishii out of stance for the flurry of punches which followed—usually culminating in that favored left uppercut.

It was after Fedor finally got clipped with a punch that he seemed to wake up. Suddenly that right hand lead which he had uncorked against so many opponents in his prime, but which had given way to whole body swings in his later years, was back on point. Straight as an arrow it shot to Ishii's chin with no telegraph. A moment later it came in again and Ishii collapsed to the floor.

Emelianenko's final fight came against Pedro Rizzo. There was no pretending that he was a decent mid tier fighter, Rizzo had been out of action for two years before stepping n the ring with Emelianenko, and his chin had been shot for half a decade before that. Rizzo was past his best back when Fedor was bursting onto the PRIDE scene. But Rizzo has always been respected as a powerful technical striker, and yet it was Fedor who was on point and Rizzo who was lunging wild. A combination into a body kick put some urgency into Rizzo. Emelianenko's boxing was back—a dipping jab in and a hook off of it stunned Rizzo. Hooking off of the jab is something you will only see from the better, more dexterous boxers out there because the moment you start straining to do it with power, the movement slows to a molasses pace and becomes worthless. It is speed and science, not a power swing.

When you see a fighter hook off of the jab you know that they are firstly educated enough to realize that not every combination can alternate hands and secondly that they are trying to score with punches and let the knockout happen as a by product, not focusing on a knockout blow. No one with two arms has ever lost their temper and hooked off of the jab.

Emelianenko thudded in a couple of right low kicks against Rizzo, himself known to have to spar with two sets of shin pads on two avoid incapacitating partners, and then came the coup de grace. Emelianenko picked up his right leg and instead stepped in on a shifting right hook which stunned Rizzo, flurrying with punches as the Brazilian legend fell to the mat.

And with that curious end to things, Fedor retired. He maintained his hefty stake in M-1 Global, was given a position by martial arts fanatic and admirer, Vladimir Putin, and rode off into the sunset. Then the noise came that he was making a comeback. The usual questions about the UFC came up, and it was obvious he wasn't going to go there as they've disagreed about so many things in the past and he can make far more money fighting nobody special. So then Rizin came along and snatched him up, announced his opponent to be Singh Jaideep, and then pretended that wasn't the case when the world predictably didn't care for that match. A mystery opponent was to be revealed near the time and surprise, surprise it was Jaideep.

Put the thought of a Fedor Emelianenko comeback out of your mind. He is done with his best days of fighting. In fact he was already past his best as a fighter when he was knocking out the top ten ranked Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski. Unless Alistair Overeem, who is now up for contract negotiations and just knocked out Junior dos Santos, decides he wants to make a cool million dollars fighting Fedor in Japan, Emelianenko is not going near another top tier heavyweight. But why would you want him to?

It is one of the curses of combat sports that a talented fighter will often not fight as smart as he should until that talent starts to fail him. That is what makes seeing a man at the height of his physical ability and fighting the gameplan of his life so special—the Fedor versus Cro Cop and Nogueira remain gems in MMA history because of this. But Fedor now is a shell of what he once was. There is no more exploding out of submissions, no more slinging guys to the mat even if they're doing everything in their power to defend the takedown, or gritting his teeth through bad positions. His hands were looking fast and crisper when he left and he might still have some neat finishes and tricks up his sleeves that any fight fan can learn from but as a forty year old man who already had a decade of dominance, just let him fight out some exhibitions and make himself and the promoters of these Rizin cards—with almost no other meaningful talent on—some money.

Nostalgia is dangerous, and warps our perceptions of what men who have not been in the ring for years could possibly do if they felt moved to make a comeback. Fedor is just another Chuck Liddell or Randy Couture now. But while you're sitting through Werdum and Velasquez trading one-twos with no regard for defense again, and dreading the thought of a rubber match in a year's time, think back to Fedor Emelianenko. The man who fought thirteen times in the three years after taking the belt from Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and looked sublime doing it.