Yarennoka! Thoughts & Commentary
January 2, 2008 by Adam Morgan
Fedor Emelianenko cuts easy. WATCH this FIGHT
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fedor beat Hong Man-Choi. Whoopty doo. I know this isn’t new information but the real story behind Fedor is that the dude’s face is made of Kleenex. He’s been cut in the first round in his last two fights. Choi cut him and made his face look beat up from only a few punches. He was cut by the first punch Lindland threw in their fight. Listen, I like Fedor. He’s a mean man but how easily he cuts is bothersome.
Gilbert Melendez was good but Mitsuhiro Ishida’s wrestling was better.
Melendez, an unbeaten lightweight before the bout, was suffocated by Mitsuhiro Ishida’s wrestling ability. Melendez wasn’t able to let go with his hands because of Ishida’s takedowns. His speed and quickness combined with his wrestling proved to be a deadly combination to Gilbert. Melendez eventually became so afraid of the takedown that he was reaching with his punches. Melendez had his moments in the fight, especially when he landed a big knee in round two, but it wasn’t enough to win him the fight. Ishida was very impressive with his gameplan and his ability to take away Melendez’s relentless fighting pace and slow the fight down. Melendez fought well but not well enough. He will almost assuredly go back to the gym and work on his wrestling and his takedown defense.
Murilo Bustamante got screwed.
How do you control a fight for the first twelve minutes, get rocked once, recover well enough to end the fight on someone’s back and still lose? The only meaningful thing that Takimoto did during the fight was land a wild punch in the second round that rocked Bustamante and left him in a bad position for a few minutes. He weathered the storm, though, and tried for an armbar that eventually lead to him mounting Takimoto and taking his back to end the round. Outside of a two minute period in the last round, Takimoto did nothing. Bustamante mounted him several times in the first, had several armbar attempts, and totally controlled Takimoto on the ground. Even when the fighters were standing, Murilo’s striking looked to be more technical and he landed the more meaningful shots. Judging fights as a whole has its upsides and downsides. Murilo Bustamante got a taste of the downside.
Kazuo Misaki vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama was a fantastic fight.
This was an intense standup battle between two fighters who apparently have some bad blood between them. Akiyama’s bloodlines trace back to Korea which made him a perfect villain for the Japanese hero, Misaki. It’s a known fact that these two countries generally dislike one another so it made for a good atmosphere for the fight itself. Akiyama absolutely floored Misaki with a left-right combination that he set up with a low kick midway through the round. Misaki generally recovers quickly and he did, but not until Akiyama was on top of him landing flush punches to the jaw. In American MMA, the fight would most likely have been stopped. But Misaki did one of the things he does best, and that’s recover quickly enough for the ref to let the fight go on. He eventually worked himself back into a standing position and that’s when he mounted his comeback, knocking Akiyama silly with a left hand a brutal head kick on his way back up from the floor. Disappointing for Akiyama that he couldn’t finish, especially coming off of a nice win over Denis Kang. A win over Misaki would have been a solid notch on his belt, both personally and professionally. A nice win for Misaki, who was coming off of a semi-upset when he was beaten by Frank Trigg at PRIDE 33. This one’s got “rematch in K-1 in Korea” written all over it.
Aoki almost got submitted.
What the hell? That’s not something I thought I’d be saying when I looked at this card. Was it lack of time for preparation because of a last minute opponent? Was he taking Bu-Kyung lightly? Who knows. Either way, Aoki almost got submitted on a couple of separate occasions by tight armbars from a Korean not known for his submission game. What’s even more strange is that Aoki was able to escape these armbar attempts and win the fight with ground and pound. It was a lackluster performance from Aoki but the fact that he still found a way to win when his submission game was not on point is certainly the bright side to this fight.
Mike Russow’s wrestling and ground game looked good.
He controlled Roman Zentsov from start to finish, taking him down with relative ease and moving from position to position on the ground with not much trouble. He eventually was able to submit Zentsov with a nice North/South choke. Unfortunately that’s about all we’ve seen from Russow. I have yet to see a whole lot of other facets of his game but his wrestling and ground game looks to be pretty solid. Let’s hope we get to see more of Russow next time out.
Who fucking care Fedor face made from Kleenex ?
People like you write this shit because something bother you, Fedor number 1 in the world fighter!!!
For all people most import.. Fedor “Whoopty doo” hes ass ,
and will wipe Rady and Sylva and many other from UFC!!!!!!
Whoa.
Did he really have a cut after the HMC fight though? Looked like bruises only…some of which I think were the result of HMC coming down on his face on those takedowns…
http://www.cdn.sherdog.com/_images/pictures/54/54483.jpg
but yes, he does seem to have sensitive/weak skin…
So a 390lb dude fell on his face a couple times and he had some bruising? Wow, how shocking. I think it’s more bothersome to see a person who doesn’t know the difference between a bruise and a cut writing retarded shit on a blog.
Some bruising? There’s noticeable patches of SKIN missing from Fedor’s face.
http://www.yarennoka.com/news/img/photo_b/1199121840.jpg
If you watched the fight you retard you’d noticed that those marks on his face were because of choi’s giant deformed head rubbing against his. What does it matter anyway if he cut’s easy? has it prevented him from being undefeated? Meaning, what is your point AHOLE?
Adam Morgan..you write some stupid article about Fedor!!!!
Adam Morgan… what is your point AHOLE?
People waiting for your answer!!
whoa, there’s a whole lot of hungry bums around here…hungry bums tend to give you that whole panties in a bunch thing in your ass crack ya know?
personally i thought that comment was some good humour shit. nice one sam.
*i mean ‘adam’.
“There’s noticeable patches of SKIN missing from Fedor’s face.”
Patches of skin missing and yet a glaring lack of any blood at all, during or after the fight. He was certainly bleeding after Lindland clipped him. Great job confirming that you’re a clueless mental midget.
Nika and Rln is this your first month wathcin MMA, adam morgan has forgotten more about mma than u have ever learned. get a clue, fedor does cut easy and they were from punches. don’t ever bash another man for having an opinion, and to then state an opinion yourself is hypocritical. If you don’t like his writing don’t read, you don’t need to talk shit to him and call him an asshole. Grow up children. Keyboard Warriors.
Fedor’s susceptibility to cuts is a valid observation and could be a problem for him if he ever got into a long drawn out match with someone like Couture.
I am very disappointed that this message board has turned into sherdog.
This isn’t a democracy, there’s no shame in monitoring the boards and not letting comments go online without approval.
So I shouldn’t post anything I find annoying or offensive Argyle? Personally, I find your comments to be annoying and ignorant. Can I take down your exaggerated comment that compares us to the Sherdog message board?
First, this site pretty much IS a democracy. I don’t legislate the opinions of the writers of the site, nor do I legislate the opinions of the readers who comment — even if they’re wrong. The only comments that don’t get approved are the ones that are slanderous, libelous, contain links to illegal video downloads, racist, homophobic, purely obscene, or purely shameless self-promotion.
Second, while there might not be shame in monitoring the comments area, I do not have the time to sit and monitor every single comment that gets submitted. I’m a writer, not a forum moderator.
Nika, you need to look at your boyfriend Fedor’s record to determine why he isn’t undefeated, as you claim.
“What does it matter anyway if he cut’s easy? has it prevented him from being undefeated?”
Tsuyoshi Kohsaka - It should have been ruled a NC but it was indeed a loss.
Not sure why people are arguing over this, even his team have acknowledged this is an issue. When he was being shopped around I think Finklestein said something along the lines of “Yes cuts are a problem and we are taking steps to prevent this from happening in the future” Not sure what he meant by that… maybe some sort of skin treatment? I can’t find the article but it was on sherdog.
But hey….everyone has a flaw. In almost all of his post fight pics and videos his face always does look worse for the wear even which is always surprising considering how fast the fight is. People are just interested in the issue since most everyone predicts it is how he will get his first true legit loss.
You make it sound like it’s not newsworthy that Fedor beat HMC easy(which it isn’t) but then you maintain that Fedor being cut easy is some kind of breaking discovery. I think that fight was ALL old news but besides that I think you pretty much nailed the point in every fight.
Maybe he has problems with skin but in the case with Choi i tend to think that his head was just pressed and bumped against the canvas and that caused those bruises but clearly those were not cuts.
What I find amazing is (and correct me if i’m wrong) is that along comes M1-Global gets the ex-pride staff together, cooporates with K1 and makes a great event like this with excellent production. Why couldn’t the UFC do this? They actually owned pride and payed the staff (I assume) when they bought the company, so why was it impossible for them to put on a show? I wonder how the UFC found the pride team impossible to deal with when here they were obviously keen to put on a show. As far as my knowledge takes me, M1 has been successful where the UFC couldn’t be. A good start for M1.
First, the UFC has no incentive to work with other promotions as long as it is far and away the industry leader. It’s up to the other promotions to build their brand, their talent rosters, and establish their champions to a point where the UFC has no choice but to work with them.
Second, while the PRIDE name has value to many fight fans around the world, it’s tainted from a business perspective in Japan due to accusations of a connection to the Yakuza. The event that took place on NYE in Japan called Yarennoka! that had ex-PRIDE staff behind it might have looked like a PRIDE show, but it wasn’t called PRIDE.
The UFC acquired PRIDE, bad business image and all. And even if it had a good image, it remains to be seen how the Japanese public would have responded to a company with roots in Japan being run by foreigners. There’s a strong sense of nationalism in a lot of countries that in m eyes, borders on racism. Outsiders in many cases are not accepted.
And it still remains to be seen how a deep connection to PRIDE will affect Yarennoka. As of now, it was a one-off event that may or may not have made money. It was televised on Japanese PPV, which has nowhere near the clearance that PPV has in the States. Two matches made it onto broadcast TV, but they had to backdoor it through FEG/K-1. So how successful was the event in a larger sense? Yeah, the YouTube clips look pretty cool but did the event make a dime? And will it go down as anything more than a farewell show?
The UFC was in a no-win situation with PRIDE. They rolled the dice hoping that maybe they could resurrect its image in Japan. If nothing else though, they knew they’d walk away with a valuable tape library and the ability to prevent its multiplying competition in the States from getting access to PRIDE’s top fighters (well, that’s what they thought, in theory because it turns out many of the contracts were not binding).
I just want to clarify Argyl’s comment that this “message board has turned into sherdog.” One of the things that I enjoy about this site is that the debate is fairly mature and always steers clear of flame-wars and accusations of “nuthugging” etc. In this thread, we had lots of enflamatory stuff thrown around for little reason.
Comments 6-7: namecalling
8: juvenile language
10-11: namecalling
16: juvenile language/homophobia
If I were a teacher, a lot of people would have gotten their names on the board in class today. And what kicked all of this off? I would argue that it was a bit of hyperbole by Adam Morgan. Fedor’s skin is still there, Adam, it’s just red and enflamed. But it’s an important point, because it was the most glaring detail in the ring when Fedor’s hand was raised in victory. What happened to his face? Even a pixilated illegal feed showed the marks.
In a post fight interview, Fedor said he didn’t remember begin hit and said that he thought he had rubbed his face on the mat when he went upside down for the first arm bar. It does kinda look like mat-burn. Personally, I assumed it was HMC’s chest imprinted on Fedor’s face from the impact of the big fella falling on him twice. But it also could have been head-butts. Anyhow, it was a David and Goliath match only without a rock to throw. No doubt the little guy was gonna get messed up.
People sure love their Fedor. I love dedicated fans.
For what it’s worth, Fedor himself claims that the bruises (or cuts or whatever) are abrasions suffered when his face rubbed against the canvas when he was going for the arm bars. You can see his interview here:
http://www.badmansports.com/2008/01/02/fedor-post-fight-interview/
God damn, Adam did you run over a dog recently? Because I believe it may have been owned by one of these guys.
Whether you classify it as a cut or not on Fedor’s face in the Choi fight, the point still stands that Fedor cuts real easy.
Examples: 1st loss was to Kohsaka after one standing elbow. In the 2nd Nogueira fight Fedor bumped heads with Nog and you could see his brain. In the Lindland fight, he was hit with one punch and his face exploded.
I wouldn’t be suprised if that Fedor/Terminator picture circulating the Internet isn’t just a photo after one of his fights.
And finally, these message boards are nowhere near Sherdog. Believe me, if I start to believe they are heading that way I will start Editing all the offenders comments to say they are little bitching 5 years old who were kept in the womb too long and thus effectively limiting your social skills.