Hate Mail: If you're a newcomer, welcome -- and duck
Forget that mug shot of me, staring out at you with ferocity and animal magnetism and ... well, anyway. Forget that. Picture me instead with an embarrassed look on my face and a hat in my hand as I apologize on behalf of CBS for Kimbo Slice and tell you that, once and for all, we're going to get it right with mixed martial arts.
I'm asking you to give CBS, and MMA, another chance. And that chance's date is Saturday. And its name is Fedor Emelianenko.
He's from Russia, and while I don't speak Russian, the words Fedor Emelianenko translate loosely to "the polar opposite of Kimbo Slice." Fedor -- please, call him Fedor -- isn't a backyard brawler with a beard and biceps and absolutely no clue how to be a mixed martial artist. He isn't a ratings gimmick.
That's all Kimbo was. He was a ratings gimmick, and the gimmick worked -- for all of us. Almost 6.5 million people watched his last fight on CBS, which means you got what you wanted, and we got what we wanted. You wanted to see Kimbo. We wanted to sell some ads. Kimbo wanted to get paid. Everybody won.
Well, everybody but Kimbo's fight organization, something called EliteXC. Shortly after Kimbo was beaten up in 14 seconds by an undersized, last-minute replacement opponent named Seth Petruzelli, EliteXC folded. That was in October 2008, and MMA hasn't appeared on CBS since.
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| Fedor Emelianenko is much more scary than he looks. (Getty Images) |
Fedor? He is the baddest man on the planet.
Saturday night you can see for yourself. Fedor will fight Brett Rogers in the main event of a surprisingly good fight card put on by Strikeforce and televised by CBS. Don't get me wrong, either. I'm not a shill for Strikeforce or for CBS. The UFC is the best fight promotion in MMA, and for MMA to become all it can -- and will -- the UFC needs to get itself on ESPN. Hey, just speaking the truth. You didn't come here for CBS propaganda, and if you did, sorry. The SEC is overrated in college football and the UFC is the best organization in MMA. Those are facts.
But so is this:
Fedor is the best fighter in the world, and we got him. And you really need to see this guy for yourself. For most fight fans in this country, Saturday will be your first chance to see Fedor fight live. For lots of you, it will be your first chance to see him at all, live or on tape, seeing how most of his previous fight footage is owned by the UFC, and the UFC wasn't about to share with CBS. (Here's a highlight reel of Fedor from YouTube.)
So this is your chance to see him live. Hell, it's my chance, too. I've seen Fedor only on tape, and everything about him is a shock. He walks to the cage with no emotion at all, as if he just woke up from a nap. He's locked inside the cage with a trained killer staring menacingly at him, and Fedor just stares back forlornly. It's freaky, and I promise you this: More than a few people will watch the pre-fight introductions Saturday night and feel bad for Fedor. Rogers is enormous at 6-5, 265 pounds, and he glowers, and he's undefeated. Ten fights, 10 knockouts, and only one opponent survived the first round -- and that guy didn't survive Round 2.
For people who don't know better, this will look like a mismatch. And it is a mismatch.
Fedor is going to hurt Brett Rogers.
He looks like Humpty-Dumpty standing on that wall, but Fedor is the best fighter in the world, in any sport. What I mean is, if we're talking hand-to-hand combat, nobody beats Fedor. You send anybody you want into an alley -- boxer, wrestler, karate black belt. I'll send Fedor. My guy is coming back. Your guy? You better go check on him, and bring a doctor.
Fedor is that good, and MMA needs this moment. So does CBS. Both took a hit with the Kimbo Slice experiment, and I have nothing against Kimbo. He's a self-made man in the purest sense, turning his skill for street-fighting into a seven-figure business. More power to him. He appears on the current season of The Ultimate Fighter, the UFC reality series on Spike, and he has completely won over me and my family. There were tears in my house, literally, when Kimbo lost to Roy Nelson. I won't tell you who cried, but it happened. Honest to God.
From a marketing standpoint, though, MMA deserved better in October 2008 than Kimbo Slice vs. Seth Petruzelli. For a decade this sport has been trying to overcome its shoddy past, when fighters could pull your hair and butt your head and kick your groin -- I've seen the Royce Gracie highlight reel -- and an unskilled street fighter was not the right guy to carry this sport onto prime-time network television. But EliteXC was not the right promotion, either. EliteXC was run by a jock-sniffing clown who knew how to climb into the cage and be seen on television hugging the winner, but who had no idea how to put on a quality product.
Strikeforce knows how to put on a quality show. The fights leading up to Fedor-Rogers are top-notch, and any fight involving Fedor promises to be a classic, even if it doesn't last long. We're about to watch the best in the world do his thing, and if it ends quickly, so be it. I'll take 60 seconds of Sinatra over an hour of Twisted Sister.
