# Fedor: Wait, Who was Exposed?



## snakerattle79 (Feb 6, 2008)

http://www.thefightnerd.com/fedor-wait-who-was-exposed/

BY NATHAN JOHNSON

Last Saturday night, Fedor Emelianenko engineered another methodical victory. He did it 1:48 seconds into the second round. Big John McCarthy stepped in shortly after a momentous F-16 of a punch crumpled his behemoth opponent. He did all of that in the relatively unfamiliar habitat of a cage. That being said, the whole thing amounts only to this: Fedor has been exposed. Really? Exposed? Why is that? Because Joe Rogan says so.

In my opinion, Joe Rogan is the best MMA color commentator in the business. He’s employed by the UFC, easily the biggest direct competitor to Strikeforce, Fedor’s current meal ticket. Plenty of people are endeared to Joe. So if he says that Rogers exposed Fedor, there’s probably a little band of Afflictioned drones firing up its squadron of noobcycles, ready to gallop like spray-tanned Paul Reveres through the streets of MMA fandom repeating it. Last Saturday night, just after a halo of punch-drunk birds were chirping around the periphery of Rogers’ horizontal mohawk, Rogan sauntered by with his own flourish of harmonic tweeting: “As for the fedor fight, I thought it was very interesting, but I thought Rogers hesitated, and I felt like Fedor got exposed a bit.” Fedor got exposed. Joe posted the comment on his Twitter account. Was his failure to capitalize Fedor’s name intentional? It’s an interesting question. Tweedily-deetily-deet.

I admit that I underestimated Brett Rogers. He was undefeated before Saturday. In June, he cracked Arlovsky’s crystalline jaw like a spastic, overweight kid in a Tiffany lamp emporium. And his larger resume reads like a sweaty urban gladiator’s personal chalkboard in a surly Irish pub. Punches, punches, punches, punches. TKO, KO, KO, TKO. All but two of his fights ended in the first round. Six of them, inside of two minutes. But like listening to a vinyl recording of Paris Hilton singing pop music, it’s hard to evaluate that sort of record and make any informed conclusions about his skills below waist level. So I admit that I assumed he would roll around like Butterbean after Thanksgiving dinner if Fedor put him on the ground. Obviously, I was wrong. Aside from having a little maturing to do, Rogers is the real deal.

Why was I so unfair? Maybe it was Kimbo’s most recent joke of an exhibition that left me biased against big, hyped strikers. Maybe I’m just mean by nature. Whatever. Fedor had his hands full. That sneaky, opening shot to his nose was concerning to this committed Fedor fan. At one point, when Fedor was flicking streams of plasma out of his eyeballs and using his fingers like a broken set of windshield wipers, I was texting short phrases of panic to whoever happened to turn up on my cell phone contact list. With a minute and a half remaining in the first round, when the dwarfed Russian was on his back and in thick mohawky crosshairs, absorbing a string of, albeit, glancing bombs, I was nauseous. My wedding ring might have edged a glass canyon in the neck of the domestic beer bottle that I strangled during the duration of those punches. But, halleluj, halleluj, halleluj, hallelujah, I was wrong to worry.

Fedor won the fight. He didn’t blanket his opponent to a decision. He did it with flair. So why this obsession with identifying weakness in the greatest representative of our sport? Why this talk about him being exposed? Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive answer, I’ll just suggest that this contagious need to verbalize doubt probably says more about us than it does about Fedor Emelianenko. We either need him to win, or we need him to lose. Personally, I needed him to win on Saturday. I’m not sure why. It’s probably the result of some forgotten kindergarten playground mishap. Maybe I’ll light some candles and draw a bath and do some reflecting. But in the case of Rogan, he might as well stay dry.

I’m suspicious that Joe’s thoughts here are more the result of the Dana Hancock on his paychecks than anything. Look, Joe has dotted his career with really admirable individuality when it comes to his honest perspective of MMA. But Fedor is different. He’s the most critical cog in the larger machine of commercial MMA today. And while he isn’t going to shut down a very robust UFC, he may be the most significant sustaining factor for an organization like Strikeforce. He’ll at least allow them to act as an increasingly resilient lamprey. He wields even more power outside of the ring than he does in it. He’s got the ability to create, sustain or destroy an organization. Like Atlas, he’s balancing a subtly gyrating world of Fertitas and Cokers and savvy Russian promoters on his shoulders.

All of that said, could Rogan still be right? Was Fedor exposed by Rogers? Sure, parts of him were exposed. Some of his blood was exposed, for instance. An inch or so of his epidermis around the bridge of his nose was exposed. Hell, he’s probably exposed right now in some brotherly spa in Stary Oskol. But was he exposed in any ominous sense? Even a bit? Of course not. If Fedor has exposed anything of note, it’s simply because he’s provided a little broader glimpse behind the iron curtain of his astonishing mystique: that he’s not a significant beneficiary of chance, that he can absorb an as-yet undefined level of punishment without losing his lungs or his calm, and that he is always dangerous. At no point last Saturday did Fedor approach a condition of submission, either by tap or by unconsciousness. He never looked tired. And most importantly, he never panicked. He worked out that same old stoic formula. So it all comes down to this: icons like Fedor inflame primal emotions in all of us otherwise stable adults. In doing so, they expose all sorts of things. And in the final analysis, after all our reflexive doubts and impassioned supports are betrayed, it isn’t Fedor who has been exposed. Nope. It is us.


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## jasvll (Mar 28, 2007)

Rogan said, 'exposed a bit', not exposed. And I assume it had something to do with the ground and pound from Rogers and his flatness when pinned against the cage.


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## name goes here (Aug 15, 2007)

Now the hype's over, looking back, Fedor walked through him. I got my wife to watch it, she knows nothing about mma, she said, 'he kept punching him until he got tired and eventually fell down'. That pretty much sums it up. Fed was on top more often, the bloody nose was just a lucky punch, from a massive guy. 

As for Joe, 'boooo'


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## LV 2 H8 U (Nov 7, 2006)

I think rogan was exposed...performing fellatio on his bosses via cyber tweets.


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## joshua7789 (Apr 25, 2009)

If being exposed means knocking someone out in the second round, then what the hell does Rogan consider a success? I guess Brock got "exposed" by Frank Mir in there last fight to, after all i think Frank might have hit him twice. This is just retarded. Im not a Fedor nutthugger, but the fact is, he walked through Brett Rogers. As a matter of fact, he has walked through all three of his last opponents. Stop trying to downplay the guy, wait until he loses.


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## ZENKI1 (Apr 19, 2009)

blah blah bla.. :sarcastic12:


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## CornbreadBB (Jul 31, 2008)

They way Rogers hit Fedor's knuckles with his face really did expose Fedor. The last emperor's days are numbered.....


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## vaj3000 (Dec 28, 2008)

the amount of shit comming from the UFC is hillarious...
looks like theyre running scared


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## jdun11 (Apr 23, 2006)

Fedor cuts easily, thats the only thing that was exposed. If he didnt get cut, noone would have said a word about him being exposed. Other than that one jab, and the flurry of punches from the top, Fedor whooped Rogers Rogers lost the standup and the ground battle. He made a mistake going for the kimura and got swept, but was never in danger.

Rogers was supposed to be the striker. But when the 2 were standing, Fedor was the one imposing his will and landing the shots. Rogers was scared of Fedor's power and it showed.

Once the bleeding was under control in the 2nd round, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before Fedor put him away.


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## steveo412 (Sep 27, 2006)

Fedor was exposed as being human. Humans bleed, Cyborgs dont bleed. As a fighter nothing was really exposed. The guy never fought in a cage before and I think he did a pretty good job. He got pressed up against the cage for a bit but still got out of it. I think next time he will be more prepared for the cage. Cant fault him though the guy fought in a ring for a lot of years, its gonna take some getting used to. He was also exposed for having an overhand right that could probably KO an elephant


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## Xerxes (Aug 14, 2008)

Anybody who thinks Fedor was "exposed", clearly hasn't seen some of his previous fights.


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## M.C (Jul 5, 2008)

steveo412 said:


> *Fedor was exposed as being human. Humans bleed, Cyborgs dont bleed*. As a fighter nothing was really exposed. The guy never fought in a cage before and I think he did a pretty good job. He got pressed up against the cage for a bit but still got out of it. I think next time he will be more prepared for the cage. Cant fault him though the guy fought in a ring for a lot of years, its gonna take some getting used to. He was also exposed for having an overhand right that could probably KO an elephant


I would like to point you to my avy. That is proof that he is, in fact, not human.

As far as being exposed, I'm not so sure that happened even the least bit. It was his first time in a cage and he lookd a little flat with his back against the cage, but in all honesty, Rogers is a huge guy and Fedor did go for a trip and push Rogers away at the right time. Most likely, Fedor knew exactly what he was doing and waited for the proper time to sweep Rogers off of him.

I thought he did very well fighting in the cage for his first time, and the fight in general was not unlike any of his other fights - he beat rogers at his own game, that's what Fedor does, and he did so in a devastating way.


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## Xerxes (Aug 14, 2008)

Michael Carson said:


> I would like to point you to my avy. That is proof that he is, in fact, not human.
> 
> As far as being exposed, I'm not so sure that happened even the least bit. It was his first time in a cage and he lookd a little flat with his back against the cage, but in all honesty, Rogers is a huge guy and Fedor did go for a trip and push Rogers away at the right time. Most likely, Fedor knew exactly what he was doing and waited for the proper time to sweep Rogers off of him.
> 
> I thought he did very well fighting in the cage for his first time, and the fight in general was not unlike any of his other fights - *he beat rogers at his own game*, that's what Fedor does, and he did so in a devastating way.


This. 

He KTFOd the "KO artist".


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## khoveraki (Jun 28, 2009)

steveo412 said:


> Fedor was exposed as being human. Humans bleed, *Cyborgs dont bleed.* As a fighter nothing was really exposed. The guy never fought in a cage before and I think he did a pretty good job. He got pressed up against the cage for a bit but still got out of it. I think next time he will be more prepared for the cage. Cant fault him though the guy fought in a ring for a lot of years, its gonna take some getting used to. He was also exposed for having an overhand right that could probably KO an elephant


You clearly haven't seen Terminator: Salvation? 

I think Fedor did great in the cage. Did you guys see all his reversals when Rogers had him pinned? That shit takes forever to get right. Plus when he was pinned against the cage he was able to get out from under Rogers in seconds.


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## TraMaI (Dec 10, 2007)

The only thing that god exposed in this fight is Rodger's turning out to be a MUCH better fighter than I had thought. He went from being a Can to being ranked top 10 in that first round.


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## Mjr (Apr 22, 2007)

LV 2 H8 U said:


> I think rogan was exposed...performing fellatio on his bosses via cyber tweets.


Hahahaha! Classic comment,


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## daitrong (May 27, 2007)

steveo412 said:


> Fedor was exposed as being human. Humans bleed, Cyborgs dont bleed. As a fighter nothing was really exposed. The guy never fought in a cage before and I think he did a pretty good job. He got pressed up against the cage for a bit but still got out of it. I think next time he will be more prepared for the cage. Cant fault him though the guy fought in a ring for a lot of years, its gonna take some getting used to. He was also exposed for having an overhand right that could probably KO an elephant


I agree. This is the first time Fedor has fought in a cage. It is obvious he needs some time to adjust. The same goes for fighters who fight in the ring when they are used to fighting in a cage. Randy is not nearly as dangerous if he fought in the ring. The same goes for Brock.


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## GrabthemCakes (Aug 4, 2009)

All the fight really exposed was that you can train *****, bjj or karate for your whole life and it doesnt really help if you have a 280 pound black giant punching you in the face.


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## LV 2 H8 U (Nov 7, 2006)

vaj3000 said:


> the amount of shit comming from the UFC is hillarious...
> looks like theyre running scared


I couldn't care less about the UFC as a company. I want the fighters to benefit. Dana is an ass. He knows the fans want to see Fedor against Lesnar, but he won't bend at all to make it happen. Of course M-1 isn't giving in too much either.
5hit I don't care I just want to see Fedor smack Lesnars smart a55 mouth off his head.


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## vaj3000 (Dec 28, 2008)

why quote me? for once Millen is right white wants to follow the WWE business model while millen and co are i suppose copying the co-promoting boxing approach


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## h2so4 (Jun 24, 2008)

Fedor has not been exposed, but I do think that he is slowing down. He did look, and someone already said this, bit flat while pinned against the fence and his hand speed did look tad bit slower. I'm not sure if its the lack of the preparation due to the all press that he had to do to promote the fight or maybe something complete else. 

I did like the fact that he started moving his head in the second round, something he should have done in right from the start. 

Many say, including Fedor him self, he was unaffected by the blood from the broken nose, and while he might have not panicked, I'm sure it did bother him a little. 

Brett did well all things considered, I honestly thought that the first sub attempt by Fedor would end the fight. Brett had his 5 seconds of fame with that jab and couple of shoots he landed during gnp..

..that being said good luck to both fighters..


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## machidaisgod (Aug 14, 2009)

What I watched was some relatively small pudgy dude get owned by a clown and busted up. Now the tirechanger is suppose to be great, before the fight he was a can. Maybe people should realize Fedor is not great, he would have lost if the amateur had not gassed. Brock would take him down and make steak tar tar out of that Fedor face.


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## Tomislav III (Aug 22, 2009)

CornbreadBB said:


> They way Rogers hit Fedor's knuckles with his face really did expose Fedor. The last emperor's days are numbered.....


lol


I think the UFC is just trying to play their hand. I'm not that concerned about it; they're doing damage control.


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## ericr (Sep 13, 2006)

vaj3000 said:


> why quote me? for once Millen is right white wants to follow the WWE business model while millen and co are i suppose copying the co-promoting boxing approach


Of course they are co-promoting, they need to! The ufc doesn't need to co-promote, they have enough talent and resources to do it all on their own. Also the pay for the UFC fighters has been going up for awhile, I do think the lower end fighters should get a bit more for their fights, but midtier and highend fighters are starting to make a good amount of money.

I don't think Rogan was trying to bring Fedor down from being the best Heavyweight, he was just voicing exactly how I felt. How many of us expected to see Fedor in a bad spot with Rogers on top of him throwing bombs? And yet it happened, he was "exposed" a bit on people thinking he can do no wrong. Fedor is great no doubt, but he can lose just like anyone else.


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## Xerxes (Aug 14, 2008)

CornbreadBB said:


> They way Rogers hit Fedor's knuckles with his face really did expose Fedor. The last emperor's days are numbered.....


Well to be fair, he did injure his hand.


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## MooJuice (Dec 12, 2008)

tried to rep cornbread but have to spread it around.

god you make me chuckle. NO ****


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## name goes here (Aug 15, 2007)

ericr said:


> How many of us expected to see Fedor in a bad spot with Hong Man Choi on top of him throwing bombs?
> 
> How many of us expected to see Fedor in a bad spot with AA dominating the round?
> 
> ...


Fixed for you (I'm saying it happens every fight, we are just being surprised by our own expectations being so ott)


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## Tacx0911 (Aug 12, 2009)

Exposed or not Fedor won the fight. Fedor is the Best MMA Fighter in the world right now.


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