Fedor Emelianenko Must Fight Alistair Overeem to Maintain Title as Best Heavyweight

because M-1 will cause so much shit to not fight Alistar. They will go all “Mayweather” and demand insane amounts of drug testing 18 times per day so that it will make it look like Alistar wont fight him because he is either afraid to get popped or afraid to get ktfo…. This fight will NEVER happen.

Unless a dude is coming off a way-too-recent injury, i never buy the whole "the version of fighter A from last night would have beaten this guy he actually lost to a few months ago."

Except I didn’t say that. I said he would have fared far better. Whether he beats him or not is a different question.

I don’t know about “evolving” at the rate of the sport. He was ahead of the curve by far during PRIDE. Everyone is catching up, and size isn’t something he can just create. He doesn’t have the frame to sit at 265. It’d be better if he’d cut, but there really isn’t evidence yet to suggest he do so.

Sadly Fedor would likely get owned by many top-five heavyweights.

“Likely” is extremely strong. What has he done to show that ANY HW could beat him or be favored to do so? Brock and AO have the body mass and power to give him fits, but to say that anyone is LIKELY to OWN Fedor is silly. He’s beaten better guys and has a better resume than Brock/Carwin/Cain/JDS, put together.

Anyways, thats beside the point of the article. Leland is right on this. Its not a question anymore of Fedor fighting top 5 guys, Its about him WINNING THE TITLE IN HIS OWN PROMOTION! We’d love to see him fight Brock or any of the UFC HWs, but its irrelevant right now because he isnt in the UFC! But we forget that there is a shiny gold belt in SF as well. But he HAS to beat AO to get it. He may be the best HW in his promotion, or even the world, but at some point he needs to grab that belt to prove it.

I think the MMA community let Strikeforce/AO off easy for having a fighter coming off of a loss fight for the HW title… especially after it had been idle for 2+ years. Let Fedor fight Werdum but after that he MUST fight AO for the belt or leave for UFC. He cant get away (IMO) with fighting Barnett or Bigfoot. If he is the best in the world, give him a title shot…. even if the guy with the belt keeps your management team up at night.

Look, obviously Fedor is getting older and the new huge HW’s are getting better and better. But until Fedor loses (a legitimate loss) he is still the man… That WILL change if he ducks AO.
 
Not going to the UFC is a personal choice for him that we probably criticize too much… but ducking AO would really tarnish his legacy.

I’ll be hoping Fedor wins. It will surely be an epic event that I’ll anticipate.

honestly i don’t see fedor winning ….. his last two outings he was getting beat until he knocked his opponent out wit one punch ….. he might not be able to land that punch this time

As brief as the standup was it was all Alistair. Brett was just outclassed.
Rogers really didn’t present anything on the feet that Overeem didn’t experience when fighting guys like Remy, Aerts, Badr etc. All he had was that ‘one punch’ everyone lauded on about.

If Fedor puts Overeem on his back, it’ll be a great way for him to win. But people are been really underestimated Overeem. All the faults he had at LHW were being blown up in the lead-up to this fight, and he really hasn’t shown that again. He hasn’t really been pushed either though.

Fedor’s striking still remains fairly rudimentary. He is highly accurate though, and very powerful and explosive… which help. But I imagine Overeem will clinch and look to throw him to the floor. Definitely an interesting fight, and I can’t wait for it to happen. But I think Overeem is going to surprise everyone.

In the 2 minutes it was standing Rogers didn’t even come close to landing anything. Overeem was faster, more technical (actually using head movement to slip punches!) and obviously more powerful. If it stays standing, Overeem Aldo-Fabers that lead leg: Rogers didn’t have any avenue to win that fight.

I still think the new Overeem beats much of that list except for maybe the top four. Dos Santos, for as much hype as he gets, isn’t the greatest striker technically. He still loops quite often, and his best punch is his straight jab… that he doesn’t use enough. Mir probably gets manhandled in the clinch, and I guarantee Overeem would see that Carwin fight as the perfect means to a win.

Overeem’s ground game is decent actually, and I think that’s underestimated here. Added weight and strength are big factors. Sure, the old Gracie way of technique works to out grapple stronger guys, but how many of these guys are absolute nightmares on the ground?

I ‘d say Fedor has the best chance, but Werdum is the best credentialed grappler here. I don’t see Werdum beating Overeem on the ground. I see him getting bucked off or throw out of a ground battle to the feet where Overeem wins.

*looks at #2, gives the stink eye

He should really be behind Barnett. No matter, he will fall down some notches after Carwin dismantles him.

I actually thought about this as well. It wouldn’t be a bad deal, but it would basically take him out of anything near the end of the year due to the GP.

I like that idea

AA? Really?

man, I always like AA, but he is done. He just looks lost out there.

roynelson

Yeah, it’s a pretty obvious stance. I admit that, but there is some strange reasoning behind rankings. Arnold ranked Overeem in the top ten before this fight, which is baffling. And some rankers will rank Fedor as #1, even if he avoids Overeem. If he does that, I’ll be instantly dropping him from #1 if he’s inactive and fights a bunch of cans afterwards.

That, and the fact that promotions don’t really want him to headline as he could end up backing out due to steroid testing… at least in the U.S. Damaged goods is the term that comes to mind.

Add to that, rankings being influenced by who has big fights coming up and so on. Rankings mean little imo.

Rankings are fun, but basically useless. There’s the old question of how much you base it off of wins and how much you use the "Dude, just fucking look at the guy!" factor.

Rankings shouldn’t be based on “Dude, just fucking LOOk at that guy!”. The MMA media seems to have this love affair with putting guys where they WANT to put them because they LOVE them. That’s not what should happen. If the guy is as good as they think, rank him objectively and let his wins ascend him toward the top. Patience is the key, and a lot of rankers have none. They have to put him where they THINK he’d be.

Very compelling arguments from all sides here.

I meant to say… needs to fight the best heavy weights “not in the UFC.”

Well, it has a lot of impact when people want him to suddenly fight Brock if he goes to the UFC. Technically, he isn’t really at that level in the food chain due to his ranking. Of course, the UFC has their own perception of a ranking.

M-1 Global’s behavior has certainly damaged Fedor’s credibility, but this isn’t a question about his credibility, but rather about his ranking. A lot of people in combat sports are hesitant to take away a fighter’s number one ranking if he hasn’t been beaten, which is a reasonable position.

But that position becomes less tenable when the fighter in question starts ducking legitimate contenders. In the case of the UFC HWs, one could make the argument that Fedor tried to fight them (M1 negotiated with UFC) but failed to get a contract that would allow those fights to happen.

Overeem, by comparison, is the second best HW fighter in the promotion with which Fedor has a contractual agreement. If Fedor ducks him, he should lose his ranking, just like Brock’s ranking would suffer if he told Dana he wanted to duck Carwin.

lol That was good!

1.) Analyzing from fights years ago to today’s Overeem isn’t valid, in my mind. He’s bigger, faster, stronger, has more experience, and doesn’t have to cut anymore.

2.) If Fedor beats Werdum and Barnett, he probably maintains it for awhile, but he’ll need to fight Overeem unless he somehow pulls off a UFC deal.

There is no slipping, Roger’s left and right foot are on the ground, but most of his weight is on his right. Overeem pushes him to the side and Roger’s left foot leaves the ground before he tumbles… Neither foot slips.

Slip? No.

you slip. Sure it was forced by the other guy manhandling you, but it’s still a slip!

Someone picked Rogers to win, and is being biased and over analyzing the fight in some way to find some kind of victory I think. Keep watching it. It was a complete domination any way you view it. Was Rogers off balance? Yes. Was it all the strength of Alistar that took him down? No. That was a skilled throw executed by by a very strong dude. That is a throw that I have seen him do on several occasions. He threw Shogun down the same way I believe at 205.

I think we can all agree by just reading the posts on this page that Rogers has poor balance, and that contributed to him going down. But he went down hard. I know some have said he was trying to roll back to his feet. I’m unsure about that. All I know is that it looked like he got rag dolled. Just my unbiased opinion.
PS. Alistar is dreamy!
jk

One more question. When Fedor thew Rogers around did he skip across half of the ring when he hit the mat? Just saying. Both effective techniques but Overeems was way more impressive looking.

No dude, there was no slipping; sorry.

Is Overeem strong enough to twist a guy off balance and throw him tot he matt? Yes.