Why Fedor Emelianenko Is the Babe Ruth of MMA

I dread family reunions.

It's not that I don't like my extended family, or that I don't have anything in common with them.  It is simply because I don't know them as well as I should, and as well as I would need to in order to maintain a good conversation.

So when I go see my extended family, and I'm sitting around the dinner table, usually we don't end up talking about anything very personal.  Usually we end up talking about sports.

Crossing these generational lines, with my uncles, and older cousins, though, always leads me to different ideas about sports than I'm used to. 

Usually, we'll start talking about playoff predictions and so forth, and about the new up and coming talent.  Comparisons between players will inevitably follow, and talk will eventually turn to discussing some of the all time greats.

The Don Cherry of the family will always pipe up about some old guy like Bobby Orr.  Then someone will say something like "Cam Neely was the first power forward, so without him, there never woulda been a Jarome Iginla."

This all got me to thinking about our sport of mixed martial arts, and how we would look back on our current greats.

Some of the current fighters will no doubt be forgotten quickly, but others will remain as the benchmarks for future success in the sport. 

So over the next little while, I'm going to try to predict how we will see some of our current greats in the near future, and I'll start with Fedor Emelianenko.

Fedor is a unique athlete, almost beyond comparison.  Yet if anyone was like The Last Emperor, it was the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth.

There are the obvious physical similarities between Ruth and Fedor.  Neither of them boasted the typical mesomorphic body type of modern athletes, as both carried a significant amount of extra baggage.

However, this would not stop either from achieving greatness.  Babe Ruth would go down in history as one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball.

Fedor Emelianenko will be remembered for having perhaps one of the longest strings of dominance in the history of martial arts.

Since the days of Babe Ruth, much has changed, although his legacy remains.

Even when Hank Aaron broke Ruth's record, Ruth's fans would not admit that the record had been broken.

His critics will say that Ruth wouldn't have been able to hit that many home runs against modern pitchers.

And throughout history, although people will remember the home run record, many will forget that Ruth was also one of the best pitchers of his time as well.

Perhaps even stranger, critics of baseball will say things like "only in baseball could an overweight person like Babe Ruth be one of the greatest players in history."  I'm sure MMA will face similar criticisms with Fedor.

Although I'm sure overweight people everywhere have used Fedor's success to argue about some sort of hidden strength, and about being big boned, or whatever it is they want to argue about.

Fedor's legacy will have parallels to these things.

Fedor's streak of dominance in the heavyweight division is unlikely to be matched any time in the near future, but that hasn't stopped his detractors from creeping up.

In the future, the depth of the heavyweight division will likely increase.  Judging from the emergence of super-athletes like Brock Lesnar and Georges St.Pierre, it is clear that in the future, MMA fighters will be more well-rounded, and athletic.

There will come a time when people will question the talent that Fedor has faced.

Even more damning, there will be some who will question some of his wins.  For example, against Ricardo Arona, most intelligent viewers believed that Arona should have won the decision.

However, as the judges of the time did not seem to understand that Fedor's supposed guillotine choke attempts were pointless from beneath side-control, they gave the decision to Fedor.

Yet despite his detractors, his legend will likely grow, even if he is eventually eclipsed by another great fighter.

In 15 or 20 years, I imagine myself at the family reunion talking about mixed martial arts.  Somehow the question of who is the greatest will arise.

Fedor's name is bound to come up.

Is Fedor the best MMA fighter of all time?  Personally, I believe that he fought the best fighters that were available for a long time, and although there will be a Hank Aaron of MMA as well, we would be fools to dismiss The Last Emperor.