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Nobuhiko Takada in a thong had nothing on this.
The hope among hardcore MMA fans for years has been that Fedor Emelianenko would finally compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. His career still feels a little bit incomplete for not having taken at least one fight on the sport’s biggest stage. That hope still remains for many, but even if Emelianenko spends his last few fights competing in relative obscurity, we can at least appreciate that it brought us Eurasia Fight Nights 50, perhaps the most ridiculous and amusing spectacle in the history of the sport.
For over five hours in St. Petersburg, Russia, fans waited for Emelianenko to fight. In the meantime, we got a parade of short mismatches and long song and dance numbers. There was the full orchestra, the women dressed up like chandeliers and the individual dressed up like a disco ball dancing while trapeze artists played in the air. There was the singer with the 25 foot white dress and eight-foot white wings elevated in the air, the blond in the see-through red dress and, of course, the singer elevated into the air by an enormous plastic spider. It was a show every bit as eccentric as Emelianenko is stoic.
The fashion accessory of choice for the evening was a ubiquitous red T-shirt with Vladimir Putin’s face on the front. It appeared to be about as common as an Affliction or Tapout T-shirt at a UFC event in their respective heydays. All the show was missing was Putin himself coming out to do a tap dancing number. Even if Putin did appear, it was going to be hard for anyone to steal the thunder of the real star of the show: eccentric Russian play-by-play announcer Roman Mazyrov. The zany and good-natured Russian buddy we all wish we had, Mazyrov actively rooted for Emelianenko, repeatedly screamed out in excitement, threw out strange conspiracy theories, made up words and just generally stole the show.
All of the bells and whistles couldn’t mask the general belief that Emelianenko’s fight wasn’t going to be much of a fight at all. Opponent Fabio Maldonado is a natural light heavyweight and had lost three of his last four. He wasn’t selected because he was thought to be a particularly challenging foe for Emelianenko. However, a wild show culminated with what our friend Mazyrov properly deemed an “unexpectable” main event.
Emelianenko was more aggressive than the Brazilian early in the fight, but Maldonado was effectively blocking almost all of his offense. As Mazyrov was speculating that Maldonado was worrying about how to get out of the cage alive, the boxer finally caught the reckless Emelianenko with a punch that knocked the legend loopy and followed with hard punches on the ground. The fight likely would have been stopped under different circumstances, but the referee elected to let it continue.
“The Last Emperor” elected to return to his feet, which provided fans with a re-creation and even a one-upping of his infamous fish-out-of-water dance against Kazuyuki Fujita in Pride Fighting Championships in 2003. Mazyrov’s commentary made it even better, as he screamed “Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” over and over again before actively cheering on Emelianenko as he got back into the fight. It was like watching Anderson Silva-Chael Sonnen commentated by one of the excitable Brazilians badmouthing Sonnen at the weigh-ins.
The next two rounds were less notable and closer, without the drama of the first. That didn’t stop Mazyrov, who was completely taken in by the fight. In the second round, he simply could not understand why Maldonado did not dive to the ground to get into a grappling match with the much better grappler when an off-balance Emelianenko briefly fell to the ground. “What the hell is going on in the Octagon?” he screamed out. It fit the chaos of the night, if not the UFC’s intellectual property rights. Mazyrov even provided translation the next round. When the crowd chanted “Fedor,” he noted that the crowd was chanting “Fedor” and further clarified that it meant Fedor. Mystery solved.
After the fight, most of the discussion centered on the judges’ scorecards, giving the fight to Emelianenko by majority decision. It was slammed as an awful decision and a robbery by the three Russian judges. Was it a bad decision? Sure, if all you’re concerned about in a decision is who deserves to win and who deserves to lose, it was a bad decision. With that said, let’s take a step back and think about the bigger picture than simply using judges to fairly adjudicate a winner and a loser. Really, the decision was the best thing for all parties involved. If EFN 50 had ended with Maldonado winning the decision, it would have been a sad conclusion to the night. Few people enjoy seeing faded legends drop fights to opponents they would have smoked in their prime. Instead, the show ended with a decision so bad it was amusing. The fans live got to see their hero declared the winner. The fans at home were provided with comic relief and a very memorable conclusion.
The referee was surely happy about the decision, which took the focus off his refereeing in the first round. The judges were happy because nothing bad is going to happen to them. The UFC has to be happy because it’s easier to justify bringing in Emelianenko for a fight that will draw a lot of money if promoted properly. Emelianenko is of course happy. Even Maldonado may be better off in the long run because he has received tremendous sympathy over the decision and the fight will be better remembered than if he won the decision. Fighters on the receiving end of the worst decisions in MMA history have tended to benefit from them over time.
Most importantly, the decision was a fitting capper to one of the most bizarre nights of MMA you’re ever going to see. Of course the Russians would screw the Brazilian after a long celebration of all things Russia. What else would have been a more appropriate conclusion to a strange and perplexing evening of entertainment? For a bad decision, it was just perfect.
If Emelianenko finally does take a fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, it will be an extremely memorable night for fans who have followed him for all this time to finally see him on a UFC telecast. Still, it will be hard to surpass the spectacle that was EFN 50 for those of us that witnessed it. As an outlaw sport has gone mainstream, it was an evening that reminded us of its wild origins, for better and for worse.