Profile MMA fighter Fedor Emelianenko

Fedor Emelianenko was born September 28, 1976.  He is the Russian heavyweight MMA fighter and is the current World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts Heavyweight Champion and the last holder of the Pride Heavyweight Championship.  Fedor holds an impressive accolade of winnings in numerous tournaments in multiple sports.  Some of note was his victory in the Pride 2004 Grand Prix and the World Combat Sambo championship on four separate occasions.  He has also medaled in the Russian National Judo Championship.

Emelianenko began fighting learning the Sambo and Judo techniques.  He trained under Vasiliy Ivanovich Gavrilov initially and then later learned under his grappling coach, Vladimir Mihailovich Voronov.  His coaches remember how weak he was when he was 10 years old, but Emelianenko’s greatest strength at that time and today was his perseverance and strong will. 

Fedor received the “Mastor of Sports” title in Sambo and Judo in 1997 and became part of the Russian National Team.  On this team he earned a bronze medal in 1998 in the Russian Judo Championship and then started to study striking under Coach Alexander Vasilievich Michkov.  Fedor started to compete in Sambo mixed martial arts in 2000 at the age of 25 because he says that he had run out of money at that time.  He also made his MMA debut for the Japanese RINGS organization which did not allow Fedor to make head strikes, which is one of his strongest points as a fighter. 

Currently, Emelianenko trains two or three times a day to maintain his strength and to improve his skills.  Fedor used to weight train excessively, but in 1997 he completely substituted his weight building exercises with sport specific training in grappling, boxing, and kickboxing.  His daily strength training consists of pull ups, dips, and crunches.  He also runs twice a day and tries to cover 7-9 miles a day.  He also enjoys high altitude training which causes him to travel to Kislovodsk once or twice a year with his team.  With all these training techniques, he has just recently published a book going over all of these unique training techniques.

Emelianenko has several people on his team, some of which include: grappling coach Voronov, boxing coach Michkiv, Muay Thai coach Ruslan Nagnibeda, Doctor Oleg Neustroev, and his training partners Roman Zentsov, and his brother Aleksander.

Fedor defended his World Comba Sambo Championship title in 2007.  His opponent failed to show up which gave him a bye into the semifinals.  There he choked out a Bulgarian fighter in 40 seconds of the fight starting.  The other finalist declined to even fight which gave Emelianenko the default victory.  Fedor’s first loss in Sambo over eight years came on November 16, 2008 at the Combat Sambo World Championships in St. Petersburg Russia.  He finished this tournament in third place when he lost to 23 year old Bulgarian Blagoi Ivanov.