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Emelianenko takes on Silva of Brazil in tonight’s Grand Prix main event.
Emelianenko
NEW YORK — Fedor Emelianenko barely speaks a lick of English. He rarely smiles. When he steps inside a ring or cage, he looks bored, as if he’d rather be reading a book.
Yet on a frigid Manhattan morning, hundreds of mixed martial arts fans formed a line that snaked through Times Square just to see him. They spent six hours waiting for their six seconds, the time it took him to scribble his name on a photograph or pose for a picture.
Why did they do it? Because he just might be the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.
“He just has that X-factor,” said Scott Coker, who runs the Strikeforce promotion for which Emelianenko currently fights. “When you’re an actor or an actress, or a fighter, you just have that charisma. He’s not a flamboyant character, but people just love him.”
Emelianenko is the biggest reason Strikeforce is expecting a sellout crowd when it stages the opening two bouts of its eight-man heavyweight Grand Prix tonight at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J. He faces Brazilian star Antonio Silva in the main event, and former UFC champion Andrei Arlovski takes on Sergei Kharitonov in the other tournament match.
The other two quarterfinals are tentatively scheduled for April, pitting Alistair Overeem against Fabricio Werdum and Josh Barnett versus Brett Rogers.
The favorite, though, is the mysterious man from Stary Oskol, Russia.
Emelianenko doesn’t look the part of a mixed martial arts icon. He stands barely 6-feet tall and weighs about 230 pounds, which means he often gives up roughly the weight of a microwave oven to the guy standing across from him. He doesn’t have bodybuilder-like biceps and six-pack abs, and his deepset eyes and whisperlike voice make it seem as if he’s half asleep.
Nor does he act and sound like a fighter. He exudes humility, trusts in his Orthodox Christian faith, and offers sincere praise for just about everyone he faces.
“In any nation, if you treat people with respect and kindness, they’ll treat you like that,” Emelianenko said through a translator. “People who are successful in movies or music, they get excited about the showbiz, and they very often lose their individuality and personality. They forget who they are. I’ve always tried to remember who I am.”
Even when the bell rings, his demeanor remains placid. He doesn’t rush across the ring, or rush to do much of anything. He is almost clinical in his craft, breaking down opponents with pinpoint punching, brutal kicks and a ground game that either makes you quit or wish you did.