“Can undefeated martial artist Fedor Emelianenko single-handedly knock out the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s dominance over the emerging sport?”

This is the question posed by Esquire magazine writer Sean Cunningham in his article that appeared on www.esquire.com today. It a pretty bold assertion and I’ll answer his question. No. As great as Fedor is, the UFC will remain alive, well, and on top in the USA for a while (like it or not). What is interesting is that the somewhat mainstream media is highlighting a MMA fighter from a different country and a different MMA organization than the UFC. Sure, many mixed martial artists have graced many magazines but for the most part all of them have been UFC fighters (Hughes, Huerta, GSP, Serra, Couture, and Liddell are the biggest that come to mind). Is the media trying to stir up controversy? Is it possible that the UFC is starting to piss off the media? And if so, could this move to spotlight fighters outside of the UFC be payback? I’m going out on a limb, but the fact that Fedor has gotten some media attention here in the state shows that MMA continues to grow and that the UFC may not be as dominant as Dana thinks.

It’s a pretty interesting article, check it out here.

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 | File under News