MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko’s stellar career came to a disappointing end at Bellator 290. “The Last Emperor” dominated Pride’s heavyweight division until the UFC bought the promotion, and he spent the last six years fighting under the Bellator banner.
Unfortunately, his final outing ended in bitter disappointment, with Emelianenko succumbing to a stoppage in the first round. In an interview with The MMA Hour, Emelianenko revealed where it all went wrong.
Fedor Emelianenko Knows Where “Everything Went Wrong” At Bellator 290
“I didn’t really think much about that fight. The camp itself went absolutely wrong. Everything bad that could happen, happened. Back then I just wanted to get done with it since it was my last fight on the contract. Basically, that was it.
As I mentioned, everything went wrong. The pandemic part — the last fight was supposed to happen before the pandemic and due to the pandemic they kept changing times, they weren’t sure where the fight was going to be happening, and during that time I wasn’t fighting and I got some injuries here and there. So everything went wrong but I just wanted to get done with it, so that’s why I didn’t postpone the fight.”
What ensued was a comedy of errors and a tragicomic ending for one of MMA’s true greats. “First what happened is I usually do certain work before in my camp.
So usually I start running a lot, and once I start running to increase my endurance, I got the coronavirus. Once I felt better from the coronavirus, I got the flu, back-to-back.
Once the flu was done, I started training, trying to wrestle more and to prepare with [Valentin] Moldavsky, and then a hernia came up.
Once the hernia went down, I had to go get a visa, so I went to Bahrain. So I went to Bahrain and I lost another week of preparation.
Then when I got back, I was supposed to get my visa from Bahrain and they returned my passport with a visa. So basically up to the last date until the fight, there was no visa and I had to go to Armenia to get a visa again.
So a few weeks of fighting was lost, the last few weeks of preparation. Even at the end, right before the fight, it’s a funny story.
When they brought the gloves to me, I opened the bag. I was supposed to get prepared for the fight — it was right before the fight so it was time to warmup — and there were two left gloves.
Nobody knows how it happened. It was a lot of small things.” However, Bellator CEO Scott Coker arranged for a pantheon of MMA legends to enter the cage to honor Emelianenko after the fight, for which the big man is grateful.
“It definitely means a lot to me. With some of those guys who came in, I’m friends with some of them, some of them I shared the cage with, some of them I still talk to.
So it definitely means a lot, from the point of support, of friendship, of sportsmanship, it definitely means a lot to me. I’m really happy that Scott Coker was able to put a show like that together.”
