I am impressed with this man. His wins over Randleman, and Cro Cap, and others.. are impressive. The man doesn't have a beastly expression on his face, he doesn't even have a particularly athletic build. But the performance defies everything listed above... This content is protected
Fedor was ridiculously athletic, powerful and agile, an explosive top tier athlete, but he didn't have the physique of an athlete. He is an anomaly among world class athletes no doubt.
Looks are deceiving in his case. He was probably the fastest HW ever in the sport. Lots of explosive power and his transitions between striking and grappling range were super quick and fluid.
Probably the GOAT HW in MMA history. On a side note his brother is a total mess these days. This content is protected
He never saw eye to eye with Dana on a personal or business level. Plus, I think Fedor wanted the UFC to co-promote with M1-Global and that was never going to happen. He fought in Affliction for a minute after his tenure in PRIDE was over. It had a very high level of competition in the heavyweight division at the time. Fedor choked out former UFC champions Tim Sylvia and knocked out Andre Arlovski in a combined total of a few minutes. Then when he got to Strikeforce, he started rapidly declining as a fighter. He beat Brett Rodgers, but he didn't look good in that fight. Then Fabricio Werdum submitted him, and that was the end of him as a world class fighter. But at his best, I would favor Fedor against anybody. Daniel Cormier would have given him a hell of a fight, though.
How did Fedor survive this? This content is protected I also question how you think other MMA fighters would survive an identical grip and throw?
Okay. How do you think Alistair, Biffoot Silva, Miocic... as well as Randleman would react to a fall on the neck like this?
During his peak he was definitely considered the beat fighter in MMA, I'm still bummed we didn't get the Superfight that was Couture-Fedor. That would have been epic.
It wouldn't have been competitive. Fedor was on a different level to Randy. Barnett would have been more interesting I think. That and Lesnar were the fights I'm bummed about seeing, but yeah Couture wouldn't have been a bad fight on paper though.
I agree. I have no idea why so many people back then thought Randy would have had the formula to beat Fedor. It seemed like a fight that Randy kind of manifested in the minds of the mma public rather than being a genuine organic desire for it.