The final way that Werdum can beat Fedor has to do with a combination of age and his own desire. At a certain point, Emelianenko’s attributes will decline due to age. Whether it’s his speed, power, reflexes or ability to take a punch, as he ages, there will be an area where he slows down. That potential weakness alone will not give Fabricio a victory, as George Foreman once said, “Great fighters don’t slip—you have to make them slip.”
On Inside MMA, Werdum predicted a submission win for himself, “I go to the ground, because I believe in my jiu-jitsu,” going on to say that it would happen in the first round because “there’s no sweat [to impair getting a submission hold as happens in the later rounds].”
Matt Lindland, who faced Emelianenko in 2007, was on hand at the pre-fight press conference and gave his assessment of Fedor’s abilities, noting how hard it was to get Emelianenko to the ground and suggesting that there are no vulnerabilities for Werdum to exploit:
“The guy’s good—I don’t know if he has a ton of weaknesses. He hits hard on the feet, you don’t want to get hit by him, and on the ground he’s got phenomenal speed for his size. I don’t really know if there’s a weakness.”
There is only one fighter who can lay claim to have outperformed Fedor in an MMA fight, although not officially: In 2000, Ricardo Arona battled Emelianenko to a controversial decision loss by using his wrestling to control Emelianenko. It was just Fedor’s fourth professional fight, but watching the tape yields a look at a time when Emelianenko wasn’t so dominant. Fedor’s only official loss via cut to Tsuyoshi Kosaka came on the same night after this bout at the RINGS tournament, but since it occurred just 17 seconds into the first round, it did not prove that Kosaka had any answers to solve the Russian equation.
So come Saturday, should Werdum muster every ounce of courage and confidence that he has, there are potential ways that he could snatch away the victory against the greatest heavyweight in existence. He’ll be going up against a lot—he has lost to far lesser fighters, as his record clearly shows. But Matt Serra and Frankie Edgar both took their chances, and so should every other challenger who walks in as the underdog. Even if Fabricio walks away with a close decision loss, he’ll be respected in defeat for taking the hardest challenge available to him in Strikeforce’s rather thin heavyweight division.
Of course, fans are eager to see if the UFC can write M-1 a large enough check to match Fedor with the winner of Lesnar-Carwin, but Werdum comes first and it would be foolish to overlook this match. On June 26th, Werdum will be prepared for the biggest fight of his life. But only Fedor Emelianenko can beat Fedor Emelianenko.