All the cool kids are reporting it MMA Junkie and MMA Mania, FightLinker and CagePotato, so I thought I'd spread the word about it too since these news are brand spanking new!

 

Without any warning or even preceeding rumors, M-1 Global pulls a rabbit out of a hat and presents everybody with teaser video about their upcoming reality show about 16 heavyweights will train and fight each other for their one and only shot at fighting THE Fedor Emelianenko.  The 16 fighters will do all the training and fighting at the Red Devil fight club in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The video made it sound like the show will actually be aired on American television, but I didn't see any clues as to when or where. They used the guy that voices over all of the American movie trailers to give it more credibility I guess. The video was mostly a compilation of Fedor highlights and previous M-1 Global/Bodog promo clips.

Well, this is interesting and came out of no where. I guess it's a good strategy to promote M-1 Global brand and their 1 and only, so far, big name - Fedor Emelianenko. This definitely worked for UFC, so I don't see why another show based in exotic Russia with the goal of getting a chance to fight this enigmatic undefeated Russian heavyweight champion wouldn't  work as well as the Ultimate Fighter Show worked for UFC. Run the show, promote the hell out of Fedor's accomplishments, give him plenty of face time and have him fight in the finale.  They may even recoup some of the 2 million dollars per they'd be paying him in TV ads money.

Definitely interesting how this will pan out. What do you think?

 

I've been wondering for a while now why and how Alessio Sakara has been getting fights in UFC. You just have to question Joe Silva and Dana White's thinking here. With numerous fighters getting cut from UFC due to 1 or 2 bad performances, this guy rides the coat tales of his highly questionable boxing career in Europe and a decision win over Elvis Sinosic (no offense Elvis, you're cool) where his punching looked kinda good.  Dana and Joe Rogan just couldn't get over him and his supposedly amazing striking skill when they initially pushed him.

With all the hype about Sakara's "amazing" boxing background, he managed to actually win only 1 fight by TKO out of his 2 wins in six outings in UFC (I'm definitely not counting the James Lee fight, that should have been a no-contest). Both of his wins were over journeymen fighters at best. He's had 3 decisive losses 1 by submission from to Dean Lister and two TKOs from Drew McFedries and Houston Alexander. None of the guys that beat him, all in the first round I should add, are knocking on the door to the title condenders room either.

So how the hell does he get fights? It's not like he was impressive in his losses either, those fight were only decent because of the other fighters. WTF is going on here? Why doesn't UFC scrap him like they've done with even better fighters after a loss or two? If UFC just in love with his tattoos? What is it? What's surprising is that nobody, at least I think..., has publicly spoke out on this - till now that is. 

Chris "The Crippler" Leben finally said something in at his myspace blog, which I found via MMAMania. In Leben's last fight against the always dangerous heavy handed Terry Martin, he showed himself as a greatly improved fighter - he was calm, methodical, fought with a good game plan and when push came to shove when Martin rocked him at the end of the third round, he didn't back down and went forward to knock Martin out. It was a great fight. Anyways, Chris Leben always says what's on his mind and here is what he said on Mr "WTF, u still in UFC?!" Sakara:

“Honestly, as much respect as possible to him, but I really don’t think he deserves to be in the UFC. I haven’t seen him win the fights or do what he has to do to prove himself at this level. You know, we’re going to pressure him and test him and I’ll tell you what , he has a pretty good opportunity to prove himself if that’s what he wants to do.” more at his blog.

Chris Leben is fighting Sakara on March 1st at UFC 82 with Anderson Silva vs Dan Henderson headlining. Also, check UFC.com's article on Leben's recent maturing.

It may not be news to many, but in his recent interview at MixFight.ru Igor Vovchanchyn was asked what he was up to now and if he was asked to come back, would he?

I'm a businessman now. I won't come back. Sure I think about it every once in a while, but I'm 35, you know. The main problem is the injuries. I can't even strike with my right hand. I got three screws in my right elbow and one in the left. I'm about to undergo an operation on my nose as I can't breathe right. To sum things up, there is no sense in my comeback.

With all the news coming out on Fedor recently, I was wondering what was going on with Igor Vovchanchyn and if there was a chance of him coming back to MMA at some point. But he settled it for me. Igor was one of the MMA's pioneers coming out of Russia/Ukraine in 1995, winning numerous 8-men NHB (not MMA) tournaments around the world and cemented his place in MMA's early history as one of the better and more exciting sprawl'n'brawl strikers out there.

MixFight.ru posted a photo gallery of the Red Devil team members from 2008 Russian Combat Sambo Championship. There are pictures of Kirill Sidelnikov, who fought in PrideFC and who Fedor speaks very highly of as someone to watch for out of Russia, Dmitrii Samoilenko and Fedor Emelianenko doing a quick seminar between the fights.

The photo gallery is here.

MixFight.ru also put a video of a lighter Red Devil fighter Mihail Zayats's fight in the finals for the 90 kg weight category. Mihail Zayats is wearing the RED gi top (kurtka).

 

Head over to MixFight.ru to catch Fedor Emelianenko's championship fight at 2008 Russian Combat Sambo Championship.

It's hard to believe that the other guy was the finalist of the tournament. He looked awkward and couldn't muster anything more than half hearted jabs and an awkward knee.

This was way too easy for Fedor. I'm sure everyone there was disappointed with the obvious disparity in skill. I'm sure it was fun for Fedor though.

Yesterday I translated a little new blurb from Fedor's official website on what's next for him and his participation in Russian Combat Sambo Championship, but forgot to check mixfight.ru to see if they posted anything on it. And they did post a picture gallery of the "Red Devil" team preparing for the championship.

Today was the first day of the championship and there is an article on the results at mixfight.ru but it's only in russian. Here is what it says:

The first day of Russian Combat Sambo Championship took place today at St. Petersburg's SKK.

The Red Devil club was represented by 4 fighters in two weight classes.

In 90 kg weight category, Victor Nemkov confidently started his bout versus Alexei Veselovzorov, dominated in stand up, then did a throw for 4 points, but after the throw lost concentration and gave up his hand, which an experienced and skilled fighter like Alexei immediately took advantage of by armbar for the win. Victor Nemkov continued to fight in the cancellation bracket and in the fight for the third place he knocked out his opponent with a knee.

Another fighter from the Red Devil club - Mihail Zayats, who quickly won in the two fights prior, met  Veselovorov in the semi-finals. The semi-final bout between these two fighters turned out to be tough and difficult, but with every minute Mihail confidently kept gaining advantage and won in the end before the time was up.

In the finals of this weight category, Mihail outpointed Vyacheslav Vasilevskii from Krasnoyarsk and became the Russian champion.

Fedor Emilianenko and Alexandr Kosarev participated the over 100 kg weight category.

It was Kosarev's debut in a tournament of this level and in the fights with more senior and more experienced fighters he looked rather confident. Having won his first fight by knockout, Kosarev met Stanislav Shushko and was confidently leading the bout with 5-0 score, but then by accident while advancing forward he was leg tripped from standing to his back and the referee awarded "clean" victory to Shushko. In the cancellation bracket Alexandr knocked out another opponent and for the fight for the third place his opponent forfeit due to injury.

As predicted, Fedor Emelianenko easily won all of his three fights.  None of his opponents in this Russian championship forfeited as it has happened before in world and European championships, to the credit of our fighters.

In his first fight, Fedor quickly attacked, after a combination of strikes he took his opponent down and submitted him. The fight was 35 seconds long. His second fight was even shorter - Fedor broke his opponent's nose on the 10th second.

The final fight against Stanislav Shushko took a little bit longer. Stanislav tried to keep Fedor at a distance using his height advantage, but Fedor closed the distance with a combination, went for a throw and a holddown. Then the fighters ended up in standing position again and the situation happened again - a combination of strikes from the champion, a throw, but this time Fedor finished his attack with a submission and won at 1 minute and 1 seconds.

In the breaks between fights Fedor was surrounded by a crowd of fan and the champion did not refuse anyone his autograph or taking a picture with him.

The winner of  the 74 kg weight category was a very experienced fighter, who is well known in Russia and outside - Vener Galiev. He, it seemed, out matched his opponents in all aspects, finishing all his fights decisively and beautifully.

At the opening ceremony Vladimir Voronin was awarded an honorary title of "Deserved coach of Russia". We congratulate him definately DESERVED award.

Those are the results of the first day of the competition.

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Well, first of all, Russian Sambo fighters are apparently have a lot more courage than some of their international counter parts and were not afraid to face Fedor no matter the out come. Cool.

Second, nice to see Fedor win all of his three fights. It still surprises me that the sport that produced him cannot give him any meaningful competition, yet. At the same time it's neat to see him being so commited to his national sport and trying to make it popular. It was one of the things he was looking forward to when he mentioned it in his recent interview.

Another surprising thing to me was that an equivalent of a Judo Ippon still has it's place in the Combat version of Sambo and can end the fight.

I'll keep you updated if anything else comes up about it.

Check out and learn Fedor's MMA style from his book: Fedor: The Fighting System of the World's Undisputed King of MMA

This was posted on Fedor's official website fedor.bel.ru yesterday but only in the Russian section so I thought I'd translate it.

Fedor Emelianenko will participate in Russian Combat Sambo Championships.

The Championships will take place on February 7th and 8th in sports complex "Peterburgskii" (St. Petersburg)

Bit of history, the first combat sambo championship in USSR took place in Leningrad(St. Petersburg) in 1939. 56 athletes participated in it. Now, there are Combat Sambo clubs and schools in 53 countries around the world.

This championship will gather top athletes from practically all regions of Russia. As far as St. Petersburg's team "Red Devil", besides Fedor it will be represented by: world Combat Sambo champion Dmitrii Samoilov, all Russian Combat Sambo champion Kirill Sidelnikov (both of these athletes are from Starii Oskol, Emelianenko's hometown), finalist of all Russia Combat Sambo championship Mihail Zayats, master of sport Andrei Lisitsin, candidate for master of sports Alexei Cherepovskii, and also Radmir Gabdullin.

Russian Championship - isn't the only competition that Fedor Emelianenko will participate in next two weeks. On the 15th of February in Moscow in sports complex "Luzhniki" President's Combat Sambo Cup will kick off.

Let us remind you that Russian Federation President's Combat Sambo Cup was established by head of the government Vladimir Putin on 20th of March of 2006. Russian Federation President's Combat Sambo Cup will be awarded to a team - winner of the yearly tournament organized by RosSport and Russian Sambo Federation with giving away his smaller copy.

When I came across this picture of Jean-Claude Van Damme hugging Fedor Emelianenko on CagePotato's It's BFF Friday!!! post I just could not stop laughing at Van Damme's face expression.  There are more pictures there, as well as a video of JCVD hugging Fedor at Yarenokka. FightLinker wrote about that episode as well here. It just didn't strike me then cause he had an animated gif of it and I didn't bother waiting for it to load.

I know how creepy this looks....and how creepy it is.... and felt I had to explain why Fedor is tolerating this bizarre behavior from Van Damme.

Thing people don’t understand is that in Eastern Europe most of the Western actions stars like Arnold, Stallone and VanDamme were way more popular than they ever were in the West. You could say it was just the right timing when Russia opened up to Western movies and VHS. There was nothing like that in the Soviet cinema at the time. Martial Arts besides Judo and Sambo were banned to practice. And those two weren’t highly televised or promoted.

Picture this, here you are in Russia at the end of Soviet era being fed non stop World War II movies on TV ala Saving Private Ryan. That was the only theme of all the action movies...well, wait..sometimes there were Russian Revolution and the Civil War movies too.

Enter VHS players. They cost a bunch and the only movies on VHS were of course from US and Hong Kong.  So the new Russian entrepreneurs put their newly acquired VHS players in little halls and basements with a bunch of chairs and charged an equivalent of 10 dollars to watch a movie on a 20 inch TV at best.

Enter Blood Sport with Jean Claude Van Damme. High spin kicking and splits doing action star doing things that most impressionable Russian youth at the time have never ever seen amounted to him becoming a huge idol and inspiration for training for many many fighters, including Fedor and CroCop.  I mean you had everyone trying to do the splits while trying to punch someone in the groin, doing splits between chairs, holding their legs up high and etc. 

Anyways, Fedor is only tolerating it cause hugging is more accepted over there and it’s VanDamme from the movies, not the creep he is in real life. I mean, from the Fedor interview I translated recently he was glad Jean Claude was there for his Hong Man Choi fight:

FEDOR: I'm very glad that the guys came to support me...Jean Claude...

But yeah…weird doesn’t even begin to describe VanDamme’s sad infatuation with Fedor and traveling to Japan to hug and kiss….

Check out and learn Fedor's MMA style from his book:  Fedor: The Fighting System of the World's Undisputed King of MMA

To all the fans out there that decided to ignore the fact that Brock Lesnar was a NCAA Division I heavyweight champ and a real elite athlete before he joined WWE to make a living and derogatory comments after his loss to Frank Mir by submission about him still not being "real", please listen to Mr. Sunshine's radio interview of Frank Mir to hear what Frank Mir himself thinks about Brock Lesnar after the fight finally took place.

To all the fans to had a clue about Lesnar's athletic experience and his good performance against Frank Mir, also please list to Mr. Sunshine's interview of Frank Mir. It's quite revealing and honest coming from Mir himself. I have to give Mir props for admitting that few times when Brock hit him he was seeing white, not a lot of fighters are honest like that.  Mir also thinks that Brock is for real and has a lot of potential in this sport.

Check out the interview, Mir also gives his thoughts on Nogueira vs Sylvia bout and what's next in the UFC heavyweight division.