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….

Cool video of Wanderlei Silva sparring Shawn Tompkins, via Randy Couture's Xtreme Couture MMA Gym blog, getting ready for UFC 79 to face Chuck Liddell. It was just light sparring. Looked like Shawn Tompkins tried to emulate Chuck Liddell's looping left hook during the video. Hopefully Silva will watch for that and of course the straight right that Chuck throws while backing up.  Silva ran into a few good straight rights in his last fight with Mirko CroCop. I'm rooting for Silva and hope that he takes notes from Rampage Jackson and Keith Jardine and lets Chuck come to him and press forward. Liddell doesn't do too well going forward, at least in his last few UFC fights.

I was just watching UFC Unleashed on Spike and Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira vs Heath Herring was on; man, it was frustrating to watch.  I didn't like the fight since it was announced. This was to be the third time the two fighters were going to meet and there was completely no point to it. Nogueira already had with a one sided decision win and a submission victory over Herring.  What was the point? To put Nogueira over to US fans? Herring looked like an amature fighter that he's always been in his debut against Jake O'Brian and in all his other fights for that matter. It's disgusting to see his STILL sloppy striking, that's after all those years of supposed striking training in Holland. Bleh...

Herring is big/heavy, strong and wild. It can be tough to fight someone like that. But that's how he got by in all his fights. Let's go over some of his big fights starting in Pride.

vs Willie Peters - scrub from Rings with zero ground game.

vs Tom Erikson - the only fight where herring was actually smaller than his opponent, but so what? He was getting dominated and landed a lucky knee. Erikson never amounted to anything spectacular.

vs Enson Enuoe - we're talking about Enson's next fight after Igov Vovchanchyn's disturbing beating and doubling Enson's head in size from swelling.

vs Vitor Belfort - Herring was fighting a light heavy and couldn't even do anything to him

vs Mark Kerr - same as Erikson fight, get beat on and land a lucky knee

vs Rogdrigo Nogueira (first match) - you know, lots of people at the time called it the greatest heavyweight fights, i beg to differ. It was all Nogueira beating on Herring, standing and on the ground. Herring showed some explosiveness in his escapes - thats's it.

vs Igor Vovchanchyn - ya, he got Vovchanchyn down at the beginning of every round and sat on top of him taking a nap. Vovchanchyn came a way unscathed after that lay and pray.

vs Fedor Emelianenko - it was painful to watch because Fedor was hitting him so hard and landing most of the vicious ground and pound ever seen to date.

vs Mirko CroCop Filipovic - again, his takedowns were sloppy, his stand up was sloppy. CroCop liver kicked him into submission.

vs Gan McGee - "please, make this amature big sloppy loof night stop!!!" i kept thinking when i made myself watch this atrosity of a fight. It was a crime against what MMA. Never watch that one.

vs Nogueira (second fight) - a replay of the first, Nogueira dominating up and down and making him tap with the anaconda choke. Herring again showed nothing.

vs ...aah, what's the point...

My point is that this guy never amounted to anything and rode the hype of his stupid hairdo's and a few lucky breaks. But fight in and fight out, his striking never improved, he's takedown defense never got better, he's takedowns never got less sloppy. A shame really.

I'm not sure what UFC was thinking after keeping him on a contract after the Jake O'Brian fight. I know fighters have off days, but there were zero glimpses of any hope of any improvement...ever.