How good is Fedor, really?
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Fedor Emelianenko is probably not someone who would be a highly divisive figure if he was in any other industry. He shows little emotion on the job and goes out of his way to respect opponents and everyone else involved in the sport. Thus, it’s actually quite amusing to see the arguments on both sides about his ‘legacy.’ On the one hand, we have those that believe Fedor is the greatest fighter of all time and no one will ever surpass his greatness- he even put God in an armbar for crying out loud ! On the other side are those who believe Fedor routinely ducks top competition, would lose (badly) against most ranked heavyweights today, and generally just has a recorded padded by dozens of wins over cans.
This is my attempt at quantifying Fedor’s wins against ‘top 10’ opposition. Of course, keep in mind that rankings in MMA are far more art than science. Events that are available on Amazon are the clickable dates.
1) June 23, 2002 (1st fight in Pride): defeats Semmy Schilt. Schilt had a record of 22-10 and was ranked 9-10. He would also be a superheavyweight if fighting under the Unified Rules.
2) November 24, 2002: defeats Heath Herring. Herring had a record of 20-7 and was ranked as high as 4.
3) March 16, 2003: defeats Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Nogueira had a record of 19-1 and was the consensus #1 heavyweight in the world.
4) June 20, 2004: defeats Kevin Randleman. Randleman had a record of 15-7. He had just re-entered the heavyweight rankings after moving from 205 to heavyweight with a stoppage of Cro Cop.
5) December 31, 2004: defeats Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. In this rematch, Nogueira had a record of 24-2 and was ranked #2.
6) August 25, 2005: defeats Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic. Cro Cop had a record of 16-2 and was ranked 2-3.
7) December 31, 2006: defeats Mark Hunt. Hunt had a record of 5-2 and was ranked 5-7. Hunt would have been a superheavyweight if fighting under the Unified Rules at the time.
8- July 19, 2008: defeats Tim Sylvia. Sylvia had a record of 24-4 and was ranked 4-6.
9) January 24, 2009: defeats Andrei Arlovski. Arlovksi had a record of 15-5 and was ranked 3-5.
10) November 7, 2009: defeats Brett Rogers. Rogers had a record of 10-0 and was ranked 9-10.
Renato “Babalu” Sobral, Ricardo Arona, and Matt Lindland were ranked fighters when they fought Fedor, but spent their careers at a lower weight classes.
Kazuyuki Fujita, Mark Coleman, and Naoya Ogawa are listed on some accounts of Fedor’s accomplishments, but there is not enough consensus on their rankings to firmly place them in the top 10. Fujita does get some bonus points as Fedor has said that was the only time someone ever hit him right.
Even with that in mind, that’s still 10 top 10 opponents beaten. The only people who’ve been able to do this are GSP, Anderson Silva, and Nogueira, and of course Fedor beat Nogueira twice. It also took over 10 years for someone to beat him cleanly, which is an extremely impressive feat. Probably something in the ice cream.
While we may never know how he would do against fighters like Lesnar, Velasquez, Carwin, dos Santos, or Overeem, Fedor’s resume at the moment and the kind of respect he commands from his colleagues place Fedor among the all time greats.
For an indepth look at Fedor, Erich Krauss’ book ‘Fedor: The Fighting System of the World’s Undisputed King of MMA’ is the leading source.
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