Fedor Emelianenko is not a wild brawler

Until mid 2011, for more than a decade of his career, he was the most elusive, least hit fighter in the whole of MMA, ahead of even Prime Machida, before Shogun figured him out sort of then saw the Machida era fall prematurely after becoming the LHW champion.

I know people are calling him nothing but a wild brawler even in his prime, and some people are calling him someone who was a calculated fighter in his prime with high fight iq but now a washed up brawler, but I can't help but wonder it has more to do with his incredibly diminished chin, slower reaction time and speed.

Fedor teaches that because of the small gloves in MMA, it's better to use your head movement to avoid strikes, and he does that. He practices what he preaches, unlike some Brazilian fighter who states in his book that you can get hurt if you throw low kick without setting up and opponents checks it, then does it and break his leg then calls it a fluke.

He has always been super aggressive fighter, but he was able to roll with and slip punches and have cat like reflexes too. Fedor is the only major fighter who had his OWN coaches talk about his decline in performance WHILE he was winning still, unlike a certain Brazilian fighter whose FANS only started to talk about after getting ktfo.

Fedor is the greatest of all time, as much as you don't want to believe in truth. The truth can be hard to handle. But ,he is, and he's not just a wild brawler. He's the complete fighter, the favorite of your own favorite fighter.
You said cat-like reflexes.

For that reason I must ignore every valid point you made.
 
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Thank you MMA gods
 
" his OWN coaches talk about his decline in performance " . Link ? Im interested in exactly what his coaches said about his decline .
I don't have a link but i do remember the interviews, they happened somewhere around the arlovski or brett rogers fights. They talked about how he had lost some speed, wasn't training as much as he used to and was starting to rely on old tricks to win fights.
 
As I said in another thread :

While some may consider Fedor’s style lately to be sloppy and uncalculated (Brendan Schaub for one just said it on his podcast), I don’t necessarily disagree with it looking sloppy aesthetically although the more I analyze this last fight the more I see hints of forethought and real time calculation on Fedor’s behalf. At least more than people give him credit for.

First off I’m no Jack Slack but I’d like to state that Fedor’s boxing should not be judged and compared to orthodox styles because it just isn’t. It’s unorthodox, and just because it is unorthodox doesnt automatically make it ineffective. For the sake of landing he is capable of forgetting boxing basics like planting your feet, as we have seen him lunge into flying hooks very often to cover distance and start flurries.

In the beginning of his career Fedor kept his hands up and was more traditional in the defensive sense. I feel now a days he keeps his hands down in order to lure his opponents into attacking, over extending, and missing in order to provoke counters. He used to be the one to lunge in with strike to clinch and throw combinations back in pride but I think that he has realized that with age and loss of speed he has had to compensate and make adjustments. His main game plan seems to still be to overwhelm his opponent with a high output, looking to totally dominate whether it turns into a brawl or not.

Instead of jabbing, he starts off by measuring distance with his right straight sort of as a feeler (of course thrown with bad intentions looking for a KO if it’s there as well). Once he gets a feel for it, if he feels no threat he will start with combinations.

In this particular fight, Frank came out looking pretty sharp immediately connecting a low kick , straight, right hook combo. The low kick had bad intentions as it was directed towards Fedors bad knee. The combo wasn’t sloppy at all. After fedor hip tossed Mir, frank himself admitted he was embarrassed and got lured into brawling by Fedor. He got on his mayweather shit but that type of boxing that looks to land hooks to the body and such has never been Mirs strength. He needed to fight a calculated fight where he used his length and weight as advantages over his opponent but didn’t.

In conclusion Fedor showed good fight IQ this time which was shown as well when he decided to get right back up to his feet after the judo hip toss. His punch selection was smart as well although obviously some of it was instincts but those instincts have been honed through years and years of fight experience which is one thing that still makes the difference in his fights til this day and will probably make the difference in the upcoming Chael Sonnen fight. His style is the exact opposite of cro cop’s which is a clinical “one strike, in and out then let’s see” approach. Fedors blitzes people and tries to overwhelm opponents in order to short circuit them. He tries to apply volume while trying to be the one the adapts quicker to the ever changing circumstances of a fight.
Both styles are effective and admirable when executed well but fedor doesn’t get enough credit for being technical because it doesn’t look like he is (but in all reality he is usually a step or two ahead mentally).

He even slips punches the unconventional way, by throwing his own punches like the right hook that connected to the back of mir’s head. Responding with his own side-strafing punch took his head out of the line while stuffing mirs punch and off balanced him for the set up left uppercut that came unexpected. He has probably done that same exact sequence before during sambo fights and training I feel. It looked like it came from muscle memory.


The short left uppercut with which he finished Mir with wasn’t a spur of the moment lucky punch, if you notice he was looking to throw it a second earlier, so there goes Brendan Schaub’s critique of it not being “calculated”. He was actively looking to land it because of the pattern he read either at the moment or by having previously studied Mir’s Weaknesses.

To suggest that he has bad boxing is absurd...just because it ain’t pretty doesn’t mean it isn’t effective boxing. After all the definition of boxing is throwing and connecting punches with the intent of harming your opponent, nothing more nothing less (and fedor excels at this). There is a sweet science to his madness.
 
These days he is extremely aggressive and doesn't really put a lot of effort into defense. I'm sure that is due to an inability to defend, but it's pretty much the very definition of a brawler.
He's always been extremely aggressive. He has slowed a bit now and his body can't react as quick.
 
People see him as a brawler because they do not understand how his style works and the dynamics of mma. He has a very unique style where he uses his speed and timing to a maximum whit aggressive attacks. He is like a lion waiting to attack and at just the right moment he strikes with a barrage of heavy punches.

Unfortunately he should have retired a long time ago because his speed and timing which is the essence of his game are diminishing. But he still has a pretty good timing and compared to other heavy weights he is still fast so he can still compete at the very top just not at all with the same result since his chin and other abilities simply are not what they use to be.
 
" his OWN coaches talk about his decline in performance " . Link ? Im interested in exactly what his coaches said about his decline .
He broke his hand so many times his coaches/teammates said he couldn't lift weights or even grab ahold of somebody to attempt a takedown for a while there. Started with breaking it vs Goodridge in 2003, again against Zulu in 2005. Didn't throw too many rights vs Hunt in 2006. He threw almost all left hands versus Sylvia in 2008. Broke his hand again versus Brett Rogers in 2009.

I will try to find the link where either his coach or teammate discuss this
 
He might not be a wild brawler, but he has an undeniable propensity to brawl wildly.

People who were around when he came on the scene will remember that he started as a brilliant tactician, who was laser focused and stuck to the game plan. His grappling was fantastic and his GnP was the best we had seen up to that point, bar none. Nobody could generate the kind of punches Fedor did from inside someone's guard.

Years later he began to rely heavily on his power and explosiveness. Sometimes it worked brilliantly, but eventually he ended up getting caught.

Even in his prime, he would throw a lot of wild shit. Fedor apologists would excuse them and call them "Russian hooks", but in reality he was breaking his thumb every other fight because of his wild punches.

Now that was a good post !
Unlike TS shit
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There is a different between what he was and what he is
 
He throws the same overhand right punch that Chuck does.

If you idiots are going to call Chuck a brawler then so is Fedor.

GSP is the GOAT anyway.
It used to be Jones & Silva until they roided.
 
Another famous myth, Fedor was outstruck by Arlovski. FALSE.

If you watch the fight in slow mo, Fedor avoids every punch by an inch.
 
I agree with most of the OP. Fedor was a great striker and could hold his own with anybody on the feet but no need to hate on Anderson to make your point.

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More than one GOAT in this pic
Someone is missing...
 
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