« Dave Meltzer: Fedor’s appeal is that he’s the anti-Brock Lesnar | Home | The happiest man in the world because of Fedor losing is… »
The internet MMA universe is exploding
By Zach Arnold | June 26, 2010
I think the happiest man tonight with Fabricio Werdum beating Fedor is not Werdum himself but Mirko Cro Cop. Mirko brought in Werdum to his camp several years ago to help work with him on the ground game (this was during the PRIDE days). And if anyone remembers at all the build-up for that Fedor/Mirko match, it was incredible and one of the most surreal moments I’ve ever seen in my life. (Including the video package of Mirko before the fight, the controversial one — you’ll know what I’m referring to if you saw it.)
My gut feeling about Fedor losing is that he lost to a guy he should have beat, but he lost to a guy who while uncoordinated standing up is pretty good on the ground. Not exactly the result I expected. He made a mistake. He put the guy on the ground and he fell into the trap. The hyperventilating needs to stop already and people need to put it all into perspective.
I don’t really feel too bad for Fedor losing and I’m not sure he feels bad himself. Disappointed, yes, but not crushed. His management team sure as hell panicking, though. As for Mr. Werdum, congratulations, you earned your lottery ticket and I hope for nothing but the best for you financially and athletically in the business. You really pulled off a big accomplishment. Thumbs up.
As for Dana White laughing like a mad man for a week heading up to UFC 116, fine. He can be the bully. Let him say what he’s going to say. At this point, he’s become predictable in his rhetoric. He just better hope that Shane Carwin, “the boring guy,” doesn’t pick apart Brock Lesnar and win the UFC Heavyweight Title. I’d hate for there to be chaos in the Heavyweight division, wouldn’t you?
Quotes and thoughts
“The Shank Tark.” My favorite line ever. Awesome.
Jordan Breen on Frank Shamrock retiring:
Narrating your own retirement tribute video? Really? Couldn’t get someone else to do these voiceovers? Hell.
Love how many people are outraged by this Shamrock homage. Strikeforce has exhausted all good will and fans are ready to snap at anything.
Congrats Frank Shamrock on a great career. Does he get into the UFC Hall of Fame? How do they determine that again?
Miguel Torres on Fedor losing:
Everyone is human. Fedor is still the man, but now he feels the cold chill of his humanity. If it bleeds… we can kill it.
Every Brazilian I know is calling me yelling into the phone. I know, believe in your jiu-jitsu.
I have a weird feeling Alexander just got murdered in a basement of a bar in Russia. The kgb don’t play no games.
Franky Shams comparing himself to Fedor is like me comparing myself to Studs Terkel. Does not compute.
So was it God’s will for Fedor to get tapped out in 69 seconds? Because if so, it clearly means God is on the MMA media’s side.
Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 59 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Fedor looks really smoth, i think, now, he lost a weight in his back. I think now is the time to retire and get into the politics.
Getting beat every 3 months is not as good like being sit on a chair in an stupid parlament.
Fedor until the end, like a total gentlemen.
How knows, maybe he can return like GSP or anderson, but my recomend is leave this crazy bussines of MMA. He can do more for Russia in his goverment than fighting MMA.
I just want to apologize to you Zach for the things that I have said that I am going to say. I feel like 45 Huddle needs to be put in check.
And….. man really, Miguel Torres speak like a Mexican, just saying shit.
I say that because im Mexican (not Mexi-American)and live in Mexico, and i know Mexicans very well.
Fedor fans are in shock because they honestly believed he was fighting top tier guys since 2000. It stinks when reality hits you straight in the head in the form of a triangle choke.
Fedor stopped fighting top guys at their peak in August 2005. He took 3 years off from fighting any sort of real competition and then fought Sylvia who was 1-2 in his last 3 fights. He was also never Top 5 while in the UFC and somehow people claim he was before fighting Fedor.
Arlovski beat non-Top 10 guys and then sky rocketed to #2 due to the agenda of WAMMA and Sherdog.
The reality is that Fedor has not fought a real Top 5 guy in over 5 years. It’s the only reason he stayed unbeaten for such a long streak. I’ve been preaching these very facts for a while.
Werdum was the reality. Another non-Top 10 guy who has looked mediocre in the past. How was this guy able to beat Fedor? Was it because he was so good? Nope. It’s because Fedor was being so overrated.
Fedor purposely avoided the next generation of top talent, despite still being in his prime years. Another tarnish to his legacy.
Finally the day has come that showed Fedor for what he really is…. Which was the best Heavyweight in the world from 2001 to 2005. And then a guy who did absolutely everything to hold onto that status for as long as possible despite logic telling us that it wasn’t true.
People can hate on my post. I would appreciate if you would respond without swears. But I do speak the truth.
Correction…. Werdum is not Top 5. He is lower Top 10 before this fight.
No #1 fighter avoided Top 5 guys for so long. That’s the truth
Werdum is top five now.
And Fedor isn’t.
Fedor is #6 at best. I think Mir would murder him.
Mir would murder Fedor or Werdum?
I certainly hope he’s ahead of overeem
and frank mir.
But he’ll get a nitro boost for the guy he just beat.
He’ll probably be top 3-4.
Fact is Carwin, Cain, Dos may be as good, but they dont own a win over Fedor!
“Fedor is #6 at best. I think Mir would murder him.”
Oh stop it.
Brock
Carwin
Velasquez
JDS
Werdum
They all need to be above Fedor. So that would put Fedor #6 at best.
I happen to think Mir and Overeem would beat him.
“Brock
Carwin
Velasquez
JDS
Werdum”
Thats an legitimately arguable list.
I wouldn’t neccisarily go that way because IMO just because a guy who was undefeated and ranked #1 and P4P for years loses it doesn’t knock him down 5 spots behind every interesting contender.
In fact I’d have a problem putting a guy with a with a 4-1 record including 1-1 against mir and a decision over Herring in front of Fedor.
At this moment from a political perspective, I’d slide Fedor back to 3, Verdum @ 2 and the Brock at 1.
Thats not my top 5 but I think it would be Politically Correct.
But that may all change again by this weekend.
We’ll know a lot more then.
How can you possibly justify putting Werdum over the guy who knocked his block off less than two years ago and is undefeated since that win?
‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson lost to guys that were below his level of talent, even in his prime years (most notably to Randy Turpin, Ralph ‘Tiger’ Jones and Joey Maxim – although to be fair in Maxim’s case he was a big LHW who fought at HW as well). Does that mean Robinson wasn’t (probably) the greatest fighter in Boxing history? No, it just means that like any other guy, he could have a bad night and look less than invincible.
The number of undefeated Boxing greats can probably be listed on one hand (maybe a digit or two into a second hand if you lower the bar a bit). The true sign of greatness is the quality of the Ws on your record and even if you want to say Fedor coasted from 2005 on, he did build an extremely strong resume up till then. Was he probably overrated in maintaining his #1 status despite the lack of consensus Top 5-10 guys the last few years? I’d say so. But I would put him up at the top of the all-time HW rankings based on his aggregate career.
Ray Robinson fought constantly though. Not a fair comparison.
Fedor has been eeking by bums for awhile now. He’s a fraud that just got exposed.
He’s not terrible by any means but he’s not a top tier heavy.
Danas twitter says it all, LOL.
Today is a great day, Fedors sheep fans are having a nervous break down, Vadim is probably pulling his hair out of his head, and Strikeforce has to delay any possible PPV they planned on having.
And I wouldn’t call Carwin boring, his style is one of the most devastating and exciting around. His name may not be as big as Brocks but he wouldn’t be a bad champ.
I’m referring to the image people have painted of Shane as “Mr. boring.” Everyone in the media wants to talk about how boring of a promo he is rather as opposed to what he can do next week.
“Everyone in the media wants to talk about how boring of a promo he is rather as opposed to what he can do next week.”
They could talk about other things, but he’s not doing any interviews. A week before the fight and we’ve had no publicity.
Oh 45 Huddle we know that you are loving this….LOVING THIS! I know it makes you so f*cking happy to sit there and see what happens and know that Fedor lost…to know that he got choked/tapped by Werdum. Oh I know you giddy as f*cking school girl that the UFC and Dana White did not sign him and that he lost and that everything that you hold sacred and precious in this world…THE UFC…has won. You are smug SOB just like Dana White. You hang on his f*cking jock and every word he says and everything single thing that he does. I hope to hell that you have a big f*cking stupid @$$ grin on your face because Fedor lost. I cannot wait until you get what’s coming to you. I can see it now that you are going to sit here and tell us how you were right all along. That is why pieces of sh*t like you do. And realize I do not hate on your posts, I hate you and your more importantly, your Zuffa-centric attitude for a sport that I love.
LOL Jesus dude calm the fuck down. I can just imagine you with a handle bar mustache, a monocle, and a top hat stroking a white cat going “You, 45 Huddle, are the bane to my existence! You will RUE this day! Rue it!”, ending with a cackling laugh.
Not really Chuck, but I know where you are coming from. I heavily dislike 45 Huddle, and more than anything, I hate the fact that he will use this loss to justify everything that he believes in, and then in toe, he will hold that under everyone’s nose (and our handlebar mustache’s) as well.
And all in all, I know that I am probably taking this loss harder because of 45 Huddle than Fedor is taking it.
Jezz, calm down. After all the trolling Fedor Fans have done for years they are getting their come upins.
come upins? Seriously??? i hope that was intentional.
In truth, the anti-fedor fans were really trolling just as hard as the fedor fans. They were responding to “Fedor sUxorS!!!!!” with “Fedor iz invinzbles!!!” Both sides were just as bad.
Listen, am I fan of the smugness of 45 Huddle? No. But the fact of the matter is that Fedor tapped out, is no longer ‘the man’ and, just like when your favorite team loses to a hated rival (such as the Yankees and Red Sox), you sigh and you move on; there’s no point trashing the other guys because your pick ended up on the wrong end. If Manny Pacquiao faces Floyd Mayweather Jr and ends up losing, I’ll give Floyd all the props in the world and move on despite my ambivalence to Floyd and my loyal following of Pacquiao.
Sometimes you’re cheering the winning team/fighter, sometimes you’re not – throwing a tantrum isn’t going to change the result so you should always take the high road, acknowledge the victory and move on.
I am not upset that Fedor lost. I don’t hate Werdum anymore or any less than I did before he fought him. What I hate, and will hate more in the coming days, are the posts that 45 Huddle will make and how “smug” he will be. That pisses me off way more than anything else. It is a fight, and 99% of the time, someone has to lose. 99% of the time, Fedor has NOT been that guy. This makes me really interested in seeing his next fight, wherever and against whomever it will be.
Be clear that I still Fedor is the man. Every fighter has lost, and I still think he beats every other heavyweight out there, and this includes Werdum. I felt the same way when Serra beat St. Pierre.
then why come back? you know this 45 huddle blogs here daily, and you state how much you despise him, so go find another site. anything less makes you look like an idiot.
Holy shit dude. Get some fucking perspective. If you are seriously that disturbed by a internet troll/shill, you probably need to seek help.
I cant believe whatever POS moderator let this garbage rant be posted.
You let this stuff happen and you become LOW CLASS ZACH. The only reason I even come to your website is because it gets thru firewalls.
By letting this get posted you just became just as much of a little bitch as this pussy who gave the rant.
All of it was a personal attack. Im shocked right now.
Jonathan, stop posting!!!! Your anti 45 rants are getting even more annoying than 45’s sometimes/often biased and borderline trollish remarks. At least he backs up his points with his reasoning for his statements. You seem to just follow him to every thread, insult him, and offer no counterpoints.
No HW is unbeatable right now. This sport has evolved so far that i believe that all the top heavyweights can beat each other on any given night. So no, i don’t believe Fedor will get owned by the UFC heavyweights, nor do I believe as you do, that Fedor will own all the UFC heavyweights.
If you aren’t in the UFC, you are a nobody. If you were in the UFC and cut, you’re a nobody. It’s that argument, that I hear all the time, that keeps driving me away from MMA. I’m tired of all the bullshit arguments.
With Fedor’s loss the argument that he’s a sham, and has been, will only intensify.
Fedor got caught, simple as that. He was punching rather than defending the sub, like he has in the past.
Its a shame that a lot of fans don’t have the dignity and respect that Werdum showed in victory and Fedor showed in defeat.
But that’s the internets, I guess.
“He just better hope that Shane Carwin, “the boring guy,” doesn’t pick apart Brock Lesnar and win the UFC Heavyweight Title. I’d hate for there to be chaos in the Heavyweight division, wouldn’t you?”
Chaos in the HW division, what are you talking about?. Carwin KO’s Lesnar he’s the number 1 HW in the world and undefeated. Mr. Boring? what a joke, the guy hasn’t gone past the first round and has won all his fights by stoppage. Yeah i’m sure that Dana is going to be crying tears when he’s diving in the huge buys UFC 116 does regardless of who wins. Wow Zach, I expect better than that from you that sounds like a hurt fanboys perspective to try and spin things anti-UFC when they were clearly the biggest winners tonight as they are always.
Uh, he’s talking about Carwin being regarded as a boring guy in interviews, not in terms of fights?
Thank you.
I got what you meant. Never heard say that Carwin’s fight are “boring”
This is a quote from Fedor:
“The one who doesn’t fall doesn’t stand up,” Emelianenko said. “I was concentrating on the strikes. That’s why I made the mistake. We’ll try and figure out and analyze why it happened. We have one more fight, for which I will come to America.”
What do you have to say about that 45 Huddle? Please, make fun of Fedor and tell him how he sucks? Tell him how he is nothing because is not and never was in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Please, let us all hear it.
Sounds like you’re taking it really personally that your favorite guy lost. Perhaps you’ve invested too much in Fedor emotionally.
Do you have any real people in your life you can talk to about this?
Seems like you’re attacking a strawman (45) now rather than dealing with the realities of what Fedor has been doing.
In regards to “The one who doesn’t fall doesn’t stand up” that is very ironic. Fedor has hid from the best competition for 5 years now to protect his legacy. In doing so he ended up losing to a guy who isn’t highly regareded. He’d have been better off to really fight the best and lose.
Now if he fights one more fight in the US then goes to Japan anyone who isn’t delusional will have to regard him as second tier to the top guys today and going forward. His legacy will not hold up. People will talk about him the way they do Mark Kerr.
I can dish it out and take it Mr. Roadblock, but honestly, I don’t care what you think. Obviously, you are a UFC nuthugger in same vein as 45 Huddle, if not worse. Piss on him all you want to. Lord knows it is what you have wanted to do all along. I bet you are enjoying him losing as much as Dana and 45 right? Come right out and admit it.
I’ve got no problem admitting Fedor lost. Everyone loses, and in this sport, no one can stay undefeated forever.
The fact that you say Fedor will become the modern day Mark Kerr just goes to show how much of an idiot you really are.
No you can’t man. Don’t ever think you’re a rational MMA fan again.
You’re just a piece of shit Fedor fanboy. I will never treat you with respect on this site again because you showed absolutely none to a guy that didn’t even mention you, and none to this sites blog.
There is no denial on my part. Nor will there be any real lasting anger or depression. Fedor lost and that is that.
What pisses me off though is that people want to see a great fighter fail just so they can attempt to put over their org.
There is no reason to pretend that Fedor ducked fighters. He fought where he wanted to and fought good fighters. People act like was ducking JDS or somes uch but JDS was barley a blip on the radar when he was fighting AA, Big Tim and so on.
He lost, but what pisses me off is that now we Fedor fans have to defend every fight he’s had, every choice he’s made.
By all rights it should just be a loss that ended an amazing run but instead every hater out there will pile on with the same old crap. He ducks, he never fought anyone good, ect, ect.
Never mind that the facts say something else, that they say his last several fights have been against top 10 fighters, that Josh B is a top ten fighter (sans steroid test) and that a fight against him is legit.
Never mind that fighting in SF and Affliction was clearly a matter of money (or are all their other fighters ducking as well?). Basically every idiot will be out in force trying to make them selves feel big by pissing on a great fighter now that he finally lost.
So fuck them.
Fedor for life.
I’m with you brother. You, me, and all the Fedor fans of the world!
Long live Fedor!
Long live Pride!
My take on it is this:
Unfortunately, there was a dearth of top level HWs to challenge Fedor whom he hadn’t already beaten after he left Pride for about 2-3 years. If my memory is correct, Couture would have been considered the best of the bunch. So, aside from how you view fights with Couture/Barnett, there wasn’t anything epic we really missed out on.
Before any of them had achieved major success, Lesnar/Carwin/Velasquez were specifically pegged for big success by none other than the maligned Kevin Iole. The unfortunate part of the scenario is that Fedor didn’t put himself in a position to fight these up and comers and instead chose to stay on the outskirts picking off stragglers, until he got tricked into a triangle.
It’s a shame he didn’t enter the UFC before this fight. The window between the Rogers fight and now would have been perfect as the green competition finally developed into legitmate competition.
“My gut feeling about Fedor losing is that he lost to a guy he should have beat, but he lost to a guy who while uncoordinated standing up is pretty good on the ground. “
I think it was a tad of Werdum is actually pretty good, even though people seem to prefer not to acknowledge it.
And a dash of Fedor had gotten rusty.
Fedor would have beaten Verdum 5 years ago. Or if he had been busy doing very much in the last 5 years.
But Feds a smart guy.
He knows the holliday is over now.
I think we’ll see him getting back to work soon.
Oh yeah, and people forget Werdum and AA were not “cut.” They did not take a pay cut and so were let go. Werdum was one win away form a title shot in the UFC when he left, and AA was on a winning streak as well. Werdum’s continued and AA’s faulterd… at the hands of Fedor. You may not like the rankings but if you’re going to refer to them then you have to recognize that AT THE TIME he fought them, Fedor’s last four fights have been against top ten fighters (well, Rogers was borderline top ten). (which btw, was not the case for Lesnar, HH was not top ten when he fought him and he only went 2-1 against top ten fighters). In fact none of the UFC “big four” have fought their last four fights against top ten guys.
But of course they were in the UFC so beating up on Kongo counts as the “shark tank.”
Werdum’s last fight in UFC was the KO loss to Junior Dos Santos.
I know, and he was pissed b/c he thought he was going to have a title shot but instead had to fight the basically unknown JDS. Took him ligthly, came out of shape, and got lit up.
After the loss UFC wanted him to take a pay cut and he said no so he bounced.
Did you just eat a big bowl of stupid, or what?
That was exactly what happened, actually. In retrospect, it seems to have been the right decision, no?
Its true that AA and sylvia were considered top ten and in the upper decks of the UFC roster when Fed beat on them.
Unfortunately the fact of the matter is, coldclocking those two is the most he’s done since Crocop in ’05.
And not the kind of wars or schedule to keep your knives sharp enough to perpetually fend off a legitimate contenders like Werdum.
If it wasn’t Werdum it might have been bigfoot.
Being in the real mix means its only a matter of time.
As to the fight, Fedor lost b/c he simply has no respect for BJJ. Mayb ehe does not train against top BJJ guys and so has forgotten why it is to be feared, perhaps he’d never felt Jits like that, but after throwing off the triangle all he had to do was reset, either on his feet or in side control. Instead he just plowed forward… not a good look.
I really, really, hope this lights a fire under his ass.
It’s kind of disappointing to see Fedor, a guy who’s always looked skilled, go down in an unskilled fashion. He basically left the opportunity for the triangle to get sunk in, then followed it up with a ridiculous escape that relied more on strength and power then technique. And technique won this fight.
He put Werdum down and then made a mistake and got hooked v a BJJ expert. No more than that and no reason for everyone to go crazy.
There is no excuses, nor is there any reason to say Fedor isn’t great anymore or take away his accomplishments because he lost. He, like every fighter has, had a moment where he didn’t really take his opponent seriously, probably looked at him as nothing more than a Cro Cop suitcase carrier, and paid for it. The end.
He should not be ranked #1, now Lesnar and Carwin is for #1.
Zach-any chance you could expand or explain the statement below further. I’ve seen some of the build up packages and obviously the fight, but I don’t recall what you are referring to here.
(Including the video package of Mirko before the fight, the controversial one — you’ll know what I’m referring to if you saw it.)
Thanks!
I don’t know if it’s still on Youtube, but before the fight with Fedor in August ’05 Fuji TV had aired a video before the fight where Mirko was looking back at his family (his father died) and I remember at the time what a storm of controversy it created online.
The irony in all of this is that Canadian officials questioned Mirko about ‘war crimes’ when he fought in Vancouver against Pat Barry. History never leaves him.
Jonathan and 45 illustrate to me what’s sort of wrong in the circles of MMA fandom. We’re still fighting ridiculous UFC vs. Pride wars from 5 years ago and it makes zero sense.
If Zuffa went under tomorrow I would still watch Strikeforce and whatever MMA I could find because I love the sport. If Strikeforce went under, I would still find Bellator or any alternative to UFC I can watch because I love the sport. I don’t care so much about the logo on the cage so much as the skill inside of it. For that I watch UFC and enjoy it. I watch Strikeforce and enjoy it.
I don’t worry if every single fight has mythical fantasy Top Ten implications. I watch to see guys gut it out, show a lot of skill and talent and put their all into combat.
I take no joy in Fedor losing because ultimately I wanted to see him versus Brock someday. Not to prove who’s #1 in the Top Ten list so much but moreso to see two incredibly skilled guys go to war.
I think that worrying about these Top Ten lists or what promotion is better all the time kills a lot of the enjoyment that can be had in watching all of the different shows and enjoying the fights for what they are, rather than what they are not.
I couldn’t agree more.
The ‘org wars’ should have died with Pride. It was stupid then and it is even dumber now. The fact that people are still hanging on to an organization that hasn’t put on a show in nearly five years is ludicrous.
You never hear fans of legitimate sports bemoan the passing of a league for years on end. The only people who get nostalgic about dead organizations are pro wrestling marks (ECW marks immediately spring to mind). Pride is dead. It has been for years. Move on with your life.
I recognize that the UFC is presently the gold standard in MMA, but I don’t have any emotional attachment to their success. If something catastrophic happens and they lose their position as the major leagues of MMA, I won’t care one whit as long I can still watch great fights. As long as someone else steps up to fill the void, I don’t give a damn about who is promoting the fights.
Yep. It is retarded.
I mean, you knew 45 was beaming, with the attitude of “now that we have this trivial stuff out of the way, we can simply move on now” to push the Zuffa-agenda he is a fan of. That is fine, but when the only arguments are the polar opposite, it doesn’t work.
Going into this fight, people should assume Fedor has some wear on him at this point, after the Rogers fight it was apparent he looked like he was slowing down and wasn’t the Fedor of the old, but you can’t talk shit about Fedor.
He should’ve retired after the Arlovski fight, I firmly believe that.
The “org wars” will never go away because the PRIDE side is still bitter what they felt was the superior promotion went out with a wimper and the UFC side is still pissed off because they felt disrespected online when they’d be jumped on for praising UFC by the PRIDE fans. It’s the same way some conservatives talk about hating “the elitist media” for looking down on them as a bunch of dumb hillbillies because they didn’t go to college and don’t live in a major city. It was “OMG you actually care about the Liddell-Ortiz rematch? What an idiot, Shockwave is the only show that matters in December!”
And it never left either side and probably never will. The PRIDE fans are enraged by all the gloating from Dana and his fans, with the “Well, it doesn’t matter if PRIDE actually did have better fights when it was around because it’s not around anymore and UFC is.” And obviously people will hold it against you forever if you repeatedly call them stupid for liking something, so that explains why Team Zuffa all practically got sexually aroused when they saw Fedor tap out: they’ve been waiting on this moment for 4 years to prove PRIDE was overrated since their best fighter got humiliated after 4 years of being so sure the next fight was the one he was finally going to lose.