Is Fedor Emelianenko, the Greatest Heavyweight Ever, Fighting in the Wrong Weight Class?
by JonathanSnowden on Jun 27, 2010 1:58 AM EDT in News
Fedor Emelianenko has dominated the competition for years looking much like he did tonight. The man famous for his ice cream cones, well, looks like a man who is intimately familiar with ice cream cones. Fedor weighed in for his main event contest with Fabricio Werdum at 229 pounds. And that was a soft 229 pounds.
If you were describing Fedor's physique in a single word it might be "doughy." Tonight he was sporting love handles that would be too much for even the mammoth pawed Shane Carwin to grab in a single handful. In the past, when Fedor was younger, quicker, and stronger, this wasn't a huge issue. Against today's crop of giant heavyweights? It can make all the difference.
We saw Fedor get bulled around the cage by a green Brett Rogers. Tonight, he looked like a much smaller man than Fabricio Werdum. And, scarily enough, at 6-4 and 238 well proportioned pounds, Werdum is not a big heavyweight. It's no longer 2005-and Fedor Emelianenko is no longer the fighter he once was. To compete realistically against the best fighters of the modern era, Emelianenko needs to be physical equals with the man staring across the cage at him. In short, Fedor needs to drop to 205 pounds.