Misfit

Is Fedor as good as his fans think he is???


With Fedor's not so big fight coming up, it got me thinking about this topic again. How great is Fedor? I know we all think Fedor's poop doesn't stink but I think over the last 2 years my opinion has really changed on him. First off, he's not the god or machine that I thought he was. Second, I'm not even sure how great he really is.

Now wait, just sit down and don't go all huffy and puffy on me yet. I'm going to take a stroll down memory lane and look back at Fedor's career. In doing so, I'm going to re-evaluate his victories and see what I've learned since then. Right now, I have doubts but want to go back and look into each fight and see how good the victory really was.

1. Andrei Arlovski (15 - 7 - 0) This was Fedor's last fight and Fedor didn't look great minus the last punch he threw. Arlovski seemed to doing a really job of working over Fedor a bit, until he got stupid. And guys, I'm not saying Fedor isn't good, just not the god a lot of us thought he was. So, to get stupid with Fedor is jut not smart and the fight ended very quickly when Arlovski did get stupid. Since then, Arlovski has been KO by Rogers whom, until his recent matchup with Fedor, was a reach to put in the top 10. Some consider it still to be. Arlovski has admitted to playing Russian roulette after the fight which shows you he's very much a lost fighter right now. He did beat Nelson before fighting Fedor but a lot of fans would say he got a lot of help from the ref in that fight but it's still a win. When Arlovski is on, he can look very good, when he's not, he can look very bad. So I would say the quality of this win is around a 6 out of 10

2. Tim Sylvia (25 - 6 - 0) Before Arlovski, Fedor destroyed Sylvia. I think a lot of us would have had Timmey in our top 10's at the time of the fight. Most of us really don't care for him but he really has fought a lot of the top guys and beat a lot of them. However, I really think a lot of Timmey's wins were due to his size. Unlike Brock, Timmey really doesn't bring a whole lot to the table besides his size. But he has used his size really well. He has pretty good hands, great cardio for a guy that big but he's just a blah fighter. So did Fedor beat a really good HW in this fight? Yeah, I guess, Tim has won a lot of fights but I really have a hard time saying Tim is a really good HW; it's a hard call. And counting the Fedor fight, Timmey has lost 4 of his last 6 fights but all the losses were against pretty good guys; well except Mercer, that was just embarrassing. Timmey's 2 wins in the last 32 months were against Vera (a blown up LHW) and Riley whom I really don't know much about so that should tell you something. But Fedor did beat him quick, the only person to beat him quicker was Mercer. So the value of Fedors win, maybe 5 or 6 out of 10.

3. Hong Man Choi (2 - 3 - 0) This is a sad joke. An MMA fight with no knees? I don't see any reason to even get into this. Having the "best MMA fighter in the world" fight this guy was just sad. Value of this fight could not be any higher than 0 out of 10.

4. Matt Lindland (21 - 6 - 0) Another sad joke IMO. Matt was a beast at MW around 3 or 4 years ago, but he really looked like crap in his last 2 fights as well. However, Matt did look pretty good in this fight and I do think Fedor grabbing the ropes changed the angle of the takedown but he’s still a MW so I won’t spend too much time on this one either. Fedor beating a good MW just doesn’t do much for me. Value of fight is 3 out of 10.

5. Mark Hunt (5 - 6 – 0) I loved Hunt, I was a huge fan of his but he has lost his last 5 fights in MMA. While he has good strikes, he is still pretty much a K1 fighter. Looking back at this fight, Hunt did very well on the ground against Fedor. He got out of a nasty freaking armbar and controlled a good part of the match from a side position. Even the Fedor nutthuggers know that Hunt was winning the first 8 minutes of this fight until he gassed. Either way, Fedor did beat him. Now, Hunt is far from being a top 10 HW. He was at least a dangerous HW so I will give this win a value of 5 out of 10.

6. Mark Coleman (16 - 9 – 0) Coleman wasn’t anywhere close to a top 10 fighter at this point in his career but he used to be a pretty good HW. I’m sure he was still a very strong fighter but had clearly lost a step at this point. I think most feel he was just collecting a check and Pride was just using him for a name. There has also been some talk about Coleman being asked to take off fights to earn a little extra money on the side (wink wink). He had also lost 3 of his last 6 fights going into this fight. So while he is a big name, I don’t give this win a lot of value. Maybe 4 out of 10.

7. Wagner da Conceicao Martins (5 - 6 – 0) Ok, see number 3, another freaking joke. Value 0 out of 10.

8. Mirko Filipovic (25 - 7 – 2) At the time, this seemed like a really big win. Hell, I thought so myself. But he didn’t even finish Cro Cop. Cro Cop had strung together a ton of wins in Pride. He beat most of the best that Pride had to offer. However, how good is that really? Does beating a bunch of, maybe, Class B fighters really make you great? Cro Cop fought for another 1 ½ years in Pride before coming over to the UFC. Most of those fights were pretty easy wins while taking very little damage. Then he fights a scared Sanchez and wins but didn’t look like anything special. Sanchez did his best Kalib impersonation. Then he got Cro Copped by Gabriel. And it wasn’t just the headkick, CC had nothing against GG all night. Then Kongo owns CC and Overeem was in the process of doing the same before it was stopped. And now Santos has made it look like CC is done as a fighter. Did CC really lose that much in such a short time or was he just not as good as we all thought he was. I’m starting to think that CC was just a good fighter and looked great fighting Class B fighters. So value of win is 6 out of 10.

9. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (26 - 18 – 2) This guy has fought a lot of good fighters, and lost. He is also a guy that would/could have done a lot better cutting the 10 lbs of weight and fighting at LHW instead. So, not much value with this win. 4 out of 10.