(please note, I wrote this back in September 07. It appeared on a few fighting and sports websites. I'm just moving it here because I love this piece.)
Why Fear Fedor? That question is on the minds of many UFC fans, particularly those who new to the sport of mixed martial arts, the ones who call all of it “ultimate fighting.” After all, lets be honest, he doesn’t look like much.
His body is nothing special. He’s big, and strong, but so are dozens of other fighters and millions of other men. He doesn’t have the hard, cut muscles of the allegedly steroid enhanced Sean Sherk. He lacks the streamlined athleticism of “Spider” Silva. His form pales in comparison to the Greco-Roman god physique that belongs to Cheick Kongo.
But the little things give him away, as he is built to be a fighter. Freakishly broad shoulders and a massive ribcage make him tough to hold down and impossible to wrap up, limiting the abilities of the few superior grapplers. Long arms allow him to ground and pound with jaw dropping effectiveness, even from his feet, making obsolete the guards of even the tallest adversaries. His bulging muscles may not inspire fear with vein-popping tightness, but they do so with their effectiveness. Forged with the unbalanced weights Fedor built himself when he lacked access to others, their physical power leaves blood on the mat and devastation in their wake.
In a perfect match with his body, his face doesn’t scare either. Starting at the top, his hair is perfectly normal. No Iceman inspired faux-hawk, no HeadBlade smooth standard fighters scalp; just short brown hair. Above his protruding brow, a big forehead announces a receding hairline, adding to the façade of mortality. A lack of high cheekbones brings roundness to his face, an effect further emphasized by a strong, but rounded jaw line, all built around a large, bulbous nose.
With a couple small changes his face could belong to Santa Claus. The soft, even friendly features meet around the true key to understanding Fedor Emelianenko: his eyes. They are not like the eyes of other fighters. They aren’t the angry, burning coals of Chuck Liddell or Ken Shamrock, declaring excess anger expelled in the ring. They aren’t the hard, unforgiving obsidian blades of Rampage or Wanderlei, spilling secrets about dangerous childhoods. They certainly aren’t the intelligent, cunning eyes of Dan Henderson or Tito Ortiz, warning against brains mixed with brawn. They’re not even the hollow, insane sockets of Monson or Kongo, declaring the darkness within. They are worse.
The eyes of Fedor are dead, amoral, and soulless. Under heavy lids they gaze at the world, lacking wonder, emotion, or life. It is as though he sees everything around him through a screen, leaving the universe blurry, detached, and unimportant. Kill a man or a fly, crush a skull or a can, it matters not. It is said the eyes are windows to a man’s soul, so what lies within Fedor Emelianenko?
If the apocalypse is real, I bring you your Death. Whether he is shattering a body with bone-jarring punches, or crushing the air from lungs with the ease of an anaconda, he seems to feel nothing. When Fedor was born, God took his hammer and his chisel and made a man to end other men. If indeed it was God at all.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Perspective
A friend of mine wrote on the Iraq War, and compared it to the great conflicts of the past. Honestly, I got angry. Here's a rebuke to those who think the world is in a bad place right now.
Around 20 million people died in the first World War, and 60 million in the second. With this war having cost us over 3,000 Americans and 150,000 Iraqis, totaled from both sides and civilians, we are looking at a lot of blood. But to compare this to wars of the past is just ignorant.
Our arrogance when viewing our times is just outrageous. Our sense of history is childish. We think we know war, and suffering, and that our world is so bad right now. And those who saw the horrors of the Third Reich and Stalin's KGB spin in their graves.
We have genocides right now, in Africa in particular. And this is terrible, and a cowardly UN labels them "ethnic cleansings" so it can defy one of its founding principles and not intervene. And this is shameful. But we do not know genocide, we don't understand Holocaust. 6 million dead Jews. No reason beside their religion. 11 million dead Russians, rotting for not standing by Stalin.
We have war right now, and all war is tragedy. But we do not know war. Nearly half of a generation of Europe's men were killed in The Great War. We lost over 10,000 men in one morning at D-Day in a conflict only one generation later. Our war in Iraq pales next to Vietnam, which in turn pales next to the World Wars.
We have rights being infringed upon in many parts of the world. China comes to mind. But those prisoners aren't seeing their wives raped and children murdered in front of them. The ash of their bodies isn't falling on an entire continent. There is no excuse for their mistreatment, but we are not witnessing one of history's grave moments.
We have racism in America, ubiquitous prejudice, I would argue. But we aren't seeing 6 year-olds knocked down by fire hoses. We have far to go, but we have come far, as well.
Some starve today, and there is no excuse for this, but Norman Borlaug and others revolutionized agriculture, and the man is credited with saving one billion lives. That's one with nine zeros, around three times the American population. The vast majority of poor Americans are overweight, as in the opposite of starving. This isn't the case everywhere, the but the world now has more overweight people than underweight ones. That is an accomplishment never reached before the last few years.
One of my dearest friends recently confessed to me how he felt that the world was so hopeless as of late, and it was all I could do to quietly give him a reality check. I wanted to yell. I've been blessed enough to tour Dachau with a man who was an inmate there. I've seen horror and loss in his eyes and words that I could never comprehend.
Do not dare to preach to me about the sorrows of today unless you know about yesterday. "We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants," and we have paper cuts we compare to beheadings. To all those who see the problems in our world, please, continue to try and bring change. To those who believe our world today to be so bad, grow up. Read a book.
Around 20 million people died in the first World War, and 60 million in the second. With this war having cost us over 3,000 Americans and 150,000 Iraqis, totaled from both sides and civilians, we are looking at a lot of blood. But to compare this to wars of the past is just ignorant.
Our arrogance when viewing our times is just outrageous. Our sense of history is childish. We think we know war, and suffering, and that our world is so bad right now. And those who saw the horrors of the Third Reich and Stalin's KGB spin in their graves.
We have genocides right now, in Africa in particular. And this is terrible, and a cowardly UN labels them "ethnic cleansings" so it can defy one of its founding principles and not intervene. And this is shameful. But we do not know genocide, we don't understand Holocaust. 6 million dead Jews. No reason beside their religion. 11 million dead Russians, rotting for not standing by Stalin.
We have war right now, and all war is tragedy. But we do not know war. Nearly half of a generation of Europe's men were killed in The Great War. We lost over 10,000 men in one morning at D-Day in a conflict only one generation later. Our war in Iraq pales next to Vietnam, which in turn pales next to the World Wars.
We have rights being infringed upon in many parts of the world. China comes to mind. But those prisoners aren't seeing their wives raped and children murdered in front of them. The ash of their bodies isn't falling on an entire continent. There is no excuse for their mistreatment, but we are not witnessing one of history's grave moments.
We have racism in America, ubiquitous prejudice, I would argue. But we aren't seeing 6 year-olds knocked down by fire hoses. We have far to go, but we have come far, as well.
Some starve today, and there is no excuse for this, but Norman Borlaug and others revolutionized agriculture, and the man is credited with saving one billion lives. That's one with nine zeros, around three times the American population. The vast majority of poor Americans are overweight, as in the opposite of starving. This isn't the case everywhere, the but the world now has more overweight people than underweight ones. That is an accomplishment never reached before the last few years.
One of my dearest friends recently confessed to me how he felt that the world was so hopeless as of late, and it was all I could do to quietly give him a reality check. I wanted to yell. I've been blessed enough to tour Dachau with a man who was an inmate there. I've seen horror and loss in his eyes and words that I could never comprehend.
Do not dare to preach to me about the sorrows of today unless you know about yesterday. "We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants," and we have paper cuts we compare to beheadings. To all those who see the problems in our world, please, continue to try and bring change. To those who believe our world today to be so bad, grow up. Read a book.
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