Strikeforce Heavy Weight Division - That Good?

Everyone keeps saying that the Strikeforce HW division is becoming a real powerhouse and is the best in the world and specificly better then the UFC but is this really true?

Well, lets start with Fedor. Fedor, Fedor and Fedor has not fought much since he got triangle choked out in 69 seconds to Fabricio Werdum, a guy that went 2-2 in UFC and got fired. Well, it looks like he won't be fighting any time soon and certainly not before Q1 2011 when the negotiations are going to begin between Strikeforce and the weird guys from M1.

Next up is Barnett. He has talked and talked about how he could beat anyone at the UFC and now has signed with Strikeforce. The truth is and I agree with Dana White on this is that Josh does not really care about anyone but himself and the money. He will walk away from Strikeforce or the UFC if it suits him. The guy just doesn't care about anybody or anything and he feels absolutely no guilt about Affliction MMA going down in flames. Why would someone want to trust him it is unclear, a guy with a bunch of failed performance enhancing drug scandals.

After that you've got Werdum who I actually respect and Antonio Silva who has a real future in MMA as well. Both guys are great in my opinion but just won't make it to the big UFC stage because they don't speak english. Well, they've already fought but these guys are real, they will fight anyone any time.

Overeem or OBEREEM, the champion, the vicious striker with a guillotine choke that has sent even Vitor Belfot tapping out in Pride is the real deal. I'm really impressed with him and I think he will soon be moving over to the UFC once he accomplishes his dream in becoming the K1 champion this year. Dana White will sign this guy and I think Overeem will agree when he finds out that Fedor is too scared to fight him and Werdum is probably the last bout he will have left at Strikeforce.

Well, thats it guys. Lets not mention Kharitonov and Aleks Emelianenko. Both of these guys are really out of shape and should not be fighting in their condition. I hope they do join some good MMA team soon though.

Fedor fighting?

I love the way Fedor and his management behave. First they react by wanting a rematch straight away. Then they realize that Werdum is not fighting and they challenge Overeem who they did not want to fight before and since Overeem is now busy (and they knew this and that is why they challenged him) they don't want to fight until next year.

Shit! what happended to fighting Antonio Silva, Josh Barnett or even Kharitonov?! Well, all of them are still strong opponents for Fedor and losing to one of these guys would send Fedor out of the top-10 rankings all together.

So what does M1 together with Fedor decide instead? Ah!! lets not fight until Q2 2011 and meanwhile just negotiate endlessly with Strikeforce. Now Scott Coker says to us (the fans) that Fedor is too busy to fight this year and that his schedule is full..... I'm luck WHAT!!!???? He is not fighting anybody, what is he doing? Last year he fought once, the year before he fought basically once since Arlovski was like in January.

I think basically the guy should either retire or fight. I think he still loves to shine like this unbeatable champion where as really his is a judo/sambo fighter with good but not elite ground game and heavy hands who is not in shape to fight anymore at the top level. The guy just needs to face it. Either you train properly with good sparring partners (take Roger Gracie and learn the triangle armbar setup) and compete 2-3 times per year as a real champion or you retire.

Fedor is an amazing fighter but this whole idea that he is still the greatest and that Sambo is the best is crazy. There are monsters out there like Brock Lesnar, like JDS, like Overeem and Werdum. These guys are at the very top now and for Fedor to go and say that Lesnar vs Carwin was a fight between two second-rate fighters is just stupid. Lesnar or Carwin have huge weapons against Fedor. If he thinks he can easily beat them, he just need to step up because talk is cheap and those guys are real dangerous, no one can deny that. Join UFC or Strikeforce. Right now Fedor belongs to neither. He works with M1.

Jiu Jitsu Prevails: Fedor loses to Werdum

How unbelievably arrogant were the M1 Global commentators in the Fedor vs Werdum Strikeforce show. The crap that comes out of the mouth of Finkelstein, Igor Petruhin and Rinat Layshev and their friends is unbelievable.

Propoganda message number 1: "Sambo is the best" - yeah they go on and on that Dana White nor any of the brazilian know what Sambo is. That Fedor can do anything he wants to a jiu jitsu fighter because he is the best in the world, no one can submit this guy, blah, blah blah. I think at some point even Fedor decided he could do his sambo tricks on Werdum.

Basically what happened was Fedor went in and forgot who he was dealing with. When he fought Nogueira he understood how dangerous Nogueira is from the guard. He was very cautious despite trying to GNP Nogueira.

This time however he tried to pass Werdum's guard with no respect for Fabricio's guard game and submission abilities. What happened, well, it turns out Sambo and Fedor are not invincible after all. I guess Fedor forgot the Arona fight and what happened there.

For some reason he decided he could do more than just land strikes from the guard. He tried to pass the guard and naturally Werdum landed a nice triangle choke. Vai Cavalo locked it in quick and real nice and once its locked, well, unless your name is Roger Gracie you are not getting out. That means even if your name is Fedor Emelianenko, you are still going to tap. That is what happened.

After that basically the guys commenting the Russian side of the show started to feel embaraced, embaraced that Fedor lost, embaraced by how little chance they gave Werdum and tried to explain that this was like an accident etc etc

The thing is though, these guys give so little respect to guys like Fabricio Werdum, who is just as much of a star in jiu jitsu as Fedor is in Sambo. Fabricio shook Fedor's hand and spoke about how much respect he has for Fedor.

The M1 team however do exactly the opposite. All they talk about is Fedor, Fedor, Fedor. That is a genius, a professor, the best fighter in the world, unbeatable and on and on and on. Not only do they not show any of the other fights in Russia but they don't even talk about Fabricio Werdum when he enters the arena.

I'm not even sure whether they actually know anything about Werdum. All they seemed to talk about when Werdum was entering the arena was that how little cheering there was.

Fedor, I think the guy is great but with all this crap around him and some of the crap that he believes in, he is wrong about some things. He got arrogant I think in this fight and gave too little respect for Werdum.

At the same time the problem is that these guys believe that Sambo gives you all the ground game that you need. BJJ on the ground is superior however and this has been proven. When did we ever see someone good from Sambo win the ADCC. Sambo is great for throws, but on the ground, it is simply not a complete art.

Now I am not saying Fedor can't win fights without jiu jitsu, but what I am saying is that if Fedor was as wise as his people say, he would train in proper facilities where he would benefit from being exposed to elite BJJ guys, elite Wrestlers etc. You can't just sit there in Stary Oskol and practice Sambo and Boxing all day long thinking this is all I have to know.

Guys from Greg Jackson's gym and many other top gyms in the US these days have a much better training programme then what Fedor could have.

Honestly how can one train for an ADCC champion without at least a BJJ specialist as a training partner. He should have gone to Roger Gracie's academy in London and practiced. He has no one to test him back in Stariy Oskol. I just hope Fedor steps down from whatever throne Finkelstein put him on and starts thinking about how to get better.

Of course he should listen to his coaches, but shit, they should have told him this ten years ago. They have the money, just not the will. They paid for it this time.

Blog Poll Results Review - Who Fedor Should Fight

It looks like out of the 58 votes made so far, the result is obvious. Even though some of us truly believe that Fedor does not have to join the UFC and trade Vadim Finkelstein for Dana White, 50% of you believe Fedor should fight Brock Lesnar.

Brock Lesnar is the #2 fighter in the world. He is the UFC champion, champion of the organization that has four out of five top heavyweights in the world. Brock is also as many say a great big threat to Fedor and M1 Global/Vadim Finkelstein.

The second most popular vote is Alistair Overeem and I am not surprised. Overeem is in Strikeforce and wants to fight Fedor. He also challenges Fedor and says his management have been evading him. Why? Because they are genuinely worried Fedor may actually lose to this guy vs. Fabricio Werdum who most agree does not have the skill set to defeat Fedor.

If you try to be objective about this, the following logic clearly does not work. Vadim Finkelstein keeps saying that he would rather have Fedor fight Barnett then Overeem. Why? Because Overeem is a "steroid bully". But the argument breaks down when he says that he would rather have Fedor face Barnett. But Barnett can't fight in the US because of steroid abuse. It is very convenient also because this way Fedor can't fight neither Barnett or Overeem. Huh!

The truth is though, if Overeem is not a candidate, then Fedor will fight someone not in the top-10. Antonio Silva does not deserve to fight Fedor and there is no one else. All the top fighters are in the UFC and Fedor has to go there.

Vadim Finkelstein and MMA

There are many controversial personalities in the young sport of MMA that is only starting to evolve and is growing in many countries from USA to Japan and as far away from Brazil as Russia. Dana White and the UFC have secured their dominance in the US market and are now expanding abroad while the old Pride remains have risen to form the organization that is now known as Dream FC that features some of the old greats like Sakuraba and Yoshida as well as the new breed of fighters like Gegard Mousasi and Shinya Aoki.

Fedor Emelianenko is a phenomenon that appeared in the late Rings promotion fights and then exploded on to the Pride arena defeating the likes of Nogueira and Mirko Cro Cop among others in a colourful career that lasted between 2000-2005. Those were the years when Vadim Finkelstein took over the management of Fedor and the troubles really began to emerge.

Late into this part of Fedor's career it became clear that the talent of the Pride Heavyweight Champion is phenomenal but also that the team around hin are careful in selecting fights, often choosing to mix it with some weaker, one-dimensional and clearly underdog opponents. October 2005 marked the end of this part of the career and started to be a stage for Fedor's domination of underdog fighters who had no business fighting the best fighter in the world at the time. After the victory over Mirko that year, Fedor fought Zuluzhinho and later defeated Mark Coleman for the second time.

Pride was clearly in its final months of existance and it is understandable that a weaker opponent can sometimes be chosen to please the fans that may demand a show such as Zuluzhinho. There was no such popular support however for Zulu or Mark and therefore there was no logic to this fight.

If you take March 2006 Heavyweight Rankings, under Mirko and Nogueira there was Andrei Arlovski, Kharitonov, Aleks Emelianenko and Fabricio Werdum, all of which were great fighters that Fedor could have met. Instead he chose to fight Zuluzhinho and Mark Coleman.

In February 2007, the top ranked were again Fedor, Cro Cop and Nogueira but under them the positions changed. Josh Barnett, Tim Sylvia, Brandon Vera and Arlovski featured as the next best. Who did Fedor fight? He fought Mark Hunt and Matt Lindland. At the time MMA Ranks.com rated Hunt as #1 fighter in the Super Heavyweight Division that does not exist. Moreover Hunt did not achieve anything special to justify such a position in the rankings. Matt Lindland was a middleweight ranked number eight in the world. Hardly someone who should have been fighting against apparently the greatest heavyweight in the world.

The contrast is all the more visible when you look at the guys that Mirko Cro Cop fought during these two years. Firstly he defeated the highly rated Josh Barnett who featured #3 in the world in 2007 and thereafter signed with the UFC to face Eddie Sanchez and Gabriel Gonzaga.

Fedor's opponents the following years were no more impressive perhaps except Arlovski who still featured as a top fighter in the rankings. The win over Rogers, although impressive, was not a top-10 win, not nearly.

Vadim Finkelstein in this played a decisive role. His demands for co-promotion with Bodog left him unsatisfied and when Affliction came along, he took this as his moment to convert Fedor's image into cash flow for M1, which is what he did, but the scheme would not last.

The economics of co-promotion with M1 simply does not make any sense and while Fedor can be marketed to the US audiences with moderate success in Strikeforce, gap in the quality of opponents raises serious questions whether Fedor legitimately can be considered the number one heavyweight in the world not to mention pound best.

If Fedor and Vadim Finkelstein really want to fight, and make fights that the fans want to see, then they need to sign with the UFC. The best fighters are there and people don't want to see Werdum or Rogers fight Fedor. They want to see Lesnar vs Fedor badly. Thats what Vadim needs to give to the fans. Here is a link to the poll on who Fedor should fight next.

Perhaps the Most Exciting Event of 2009

Last weekend we witnessed one of the most exciting line-ups in mixed martial arts better known as MMA. Strikeforce have managed to do a good job here and despite watching an edited Russian version of the tournament, I have to say the fights were brilliant.

Here are some of my comments on the fights and then on the show itself.

Gegard Mousasi vs. Thierry Sokoudjou - nice fight where Gegard's standing skills were just too much for his opponent. It frankly looked like Sokoudjou was having a really tough time throwing any kind of punch against the talented striker and in the end the result was predictable, TKO, as expected, should have put some money on Gegard here.

Fabricio Werdum vs. Antonio Silva - Fabricio is a very talented jiu jitsu fighter and was able to show his skills in the match but was unable to submit "Big Foot" Silva who has a black belt in jiu jitsu himself. The first round was certainly Silva's, who showed some superior striking ability and counter punching but the second and third rounds were Fabricio's. I especially enjoyed some of his muay thai knees to the head Fabricio tried to deliver. A very close decision win for Werdum in my opinion that does nothing to justify him fighting Fedor in his next bout at least.

Jake Shields vs. Jason "Mayhem" Miller - both guys are actually great on the ground and although shields was given such great odds, I think we all saw that at some point Miller nearly executed a nice rear naked choke on Shields (who was saved by the end of the round). His title fight for the middleweight Strikeforce belt was basically a submission grappling match and it was sad to see Miller not being able to execute his stand up kick boxing skills. In the end, after five exhausting rounds in the cage, Shields dominated with takedowns and grappling and that earned him the decision in the end.

Brett Rogers vs. Fedor Emelianenko - every fight with Fedor is exciting to watch whether it is a grappling or stand up battle. No one can really predict what will happen. Everyone was saying that Fedor would win by submission but there you go.

Brett Rogers looked relatively solid with his big punches, ground and pound and defending himself on the ground from submissions. I think it was also visible that Rogers was able to use his size advantage but Fedor's ability to overcome that was also obvious. The first round was tough on Fedor. Rodgers managed to cut and possibly break Fedor's nose in the opening punch. Blood was everywhere which prevented Fedor from breathing through his nose (no good if you are fighting in an MMA tournament no doubt). In the second, Fedor was able to evade some nasty ground and pound (while to be fair getting hit as well) and with a nice overhand right took Rodgers down and followed up with further strikes to the head of a grounded opponent. TKO for Fedor after a powerful punch to Rodgers who was expecting a takedown from the Sambo legend.

Fedor Emelianenko keeps his perfect record and has added further to his legend. Despite injuring his hand and getting his nose broken, he was able to show that he is still the number 1heavy weight in the world.

The production, at least the Russian edited one was horrible though. I have not seen the CBS version, but the version I saw should be rated as less than poor. (it was Pay Per View and live, not some cheap recording)

You probably would not even know that Strikeforce was organizing nearly the entire thing if you saw it. A ton of M1-Challenge flashbacks from Feb 2009 where no name fighters met were shown throughout the tournament. Instead of letting us hear about the fighters that we are going to see, they showed us over and over no-name fighters from M1. It was ridiculous. The under card was completely ignored. Did not get to see the entrances (apart from Miller's and that was criticized but idiot commentators), did not hear any comments about their past accomplishments. The Russian commentator at some point actually said that he has never seen Jason "Mayhem" Miller fight and does not know anything about him. Terrible! I would just love it if Fedor ditched that Finkelstein and his M1 cronies.

Great fights but poor promotion. Would love to hear some comments about what the CBS show was like.

Fedor vs Mousasi Exhibition Match M1 Breakthrough

M1-Global are doing all they can to promote themselves. Thanks to their August event called M1 Breakthrough held this year in the US, we got to see a sparring match with two great fighters displaying their skills to the American audiences.

Aoki vs Fedor was more exciting in my opinion due to the differences in style and weight. Still an interesting event. Take a look at the video below: