Great fighters, big market and Bellator is steeling all the talent in Russia.
Fedor was 32 or 33 when he lost to werdum, his same age, yeah I know he was in some wars and I agree that age had a much bigger impact on him than on werdum, Fedor got by a lot due his physical skills, so aging definitely played a big factor...
chuck was older then fedor, chuk had no chin by the time he fought shogun, and Fedor was never ktfo, his chin was fine, he took a brutal beating vs bigfoot still managed to stan up and want to come out to the 3rd, not the same case.
I don't think they go around scouting, many brazilian fighters have contacts in the ufc, let's say you live in Rio and train at Team Nogueira, if you're good there is a big chance Nogueira, Anderson, Soares or whatever may tell dana
"hey you should check this guy out"
Also most Brazilian promotions are weak or are non-exclusive, jungle fight, amazon fight, whatever put some good cards here and there but they are really minor promotions akin to KOTC or other unknown american promotions.
Eastern Europe on the other hand got some bigger promotions like M-1 And KSW
Plus Bellator is signing the best Eastern european talent right now IMO