Fedor: 'The Good Russian'

For the die hard MMA fan, no one has reached such a mythic status as 'The Last Emperor" Fedor Emelianenko. The New York Times recently did an expose on the heavyweight and as Kid Nate accurately describes 'this is a big deal.'

After reading the article I just can't help but feel that Fedor is the perfect Russian serf. He's largely anonymous, loyal, quiet, yet with a hidden strength of Mother Russia. Fedor would make any Czar extremely happy. Here's an excerpt

"I like living here at home much better; I like my own city," Emelianenko, 32, said of the small industrial city where he has lived since age 2 after moving with his family from what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine.

Outside his rigorous training schedule — he spends hours honing various boxing and martial arts styles and runs 10 miles a day — Emelianenko’s life can seem at times to more closely resemble that of a traditional Russian peasant. He reads Orthodox Christian literature and relaxes at a banya, or Russian bathhouse

Or how about staying away from organized crime in the aftermath of the Soviet Union.

He left school as the Soviet Union crumbled, a time when even once-famous Soviet fighters began to have lucrative, if often fatal, careers in the mafia as bodyguards and hit men. The visage of a burly former fighter with a crew cut, black track pants and gold chains became an icon of 1990s criminality.

One of these, Otari Kvantrishvili, a former Soviet Greco-Roman wrestling coach, was said to have climbed to the very heights of the mafia hierarchy before he was shot to death in 1994 by a sniper.

While he admitted to tough times during this era, Emelianenko said he took a different route. "I have never associated with criminal structures," he said by telephone from Stary Oskol.

As I said before, the perfect serf.