Videos

Okay, Dana Jacobson of ESPN.  We know you're not an MMA reporter, so the sight of Fedor Emelianenko's name on the teleprompter was probably pretty jarring.  But seriously?  Umalenenko?  How do you look at a name that starts with an E, contains no U's, and come up with that?  You didn't want to maybe ask someone beforehand how it was pronounced?  Brett Rogers was sitting right there, and chances are he's heard the name enough by now to help you out, even though "The Grimm" is too much of a goddamned gentleman to make you feel bad about it. 

If you saw the "Fight Camp 360" episode, there's really no new information on Rogers here, but it is interesting to listen to him talk about fighting Fedor as if he is not an extreme underdog.  I can't decide if he just needs to tell himself that it's going to be as simple as going in there and banging, or if he truly believes it.  He says he has no other option but to win, and yet almost no one expects him to.  If he does pull it off, could this be the greatest upset in MMA history?

Semi-related: Yeah, Strikeforce and CBS are putting a lot into promoting the Fedor/Rogers bout, and this ESPN appearance is proof of that, but what about the other fights on the card?  That's exactly what Ariel Helwani and I discussed, among other topics, on this week's roundtable discussion over at MMA Fanhouse.  Be a doll and check it out, won't you?

(Props: sports.sho.com)

For Brett Rogers, the challenge on Saturday will be to strip away the myth from Fedor Emelianenko and approach him like he's any other man. Which he is, of course. Fedor, as we saw last night on Fight Camp 360, is just a guy who loves his family and God, who works out in a community gym alongside schoolchildren, who still lives in the small mining town he grew up in, who enjoys a good oak-twig whipping in a Russian sauna. It's unnerving how normal Fedor is. His priest/BFF, Father Andrey, says: "You can feel the kindness come out of him, and when you communicate with him, you are being charged by his kindness." Really? Are we talking about the same guy who did this to Gary Goodridge?

(Props: M1mixfight)

Letting Jerry Millen and his D-bag friend Ron introduce this footage of Fedor Emelianenko kickin' it in Stary Oskol may be an immediate buzzkill, but stick with it and you'll catch the Glorious Sweater of Absolute Victory paying its respects at church and settling down for a nice cup of tea. Hopefully tonight's episode of Fight Camp 360 will shed a little more insight on where the sweater came from and what it might want from us.

You know you're somebody in the world of mixed martial arts when A/V genius Genghis Con makes you the subject of one of his mesmerizing videos.  That's why we're still waiting for that highlight reel featuring clips of us sitting at our computers to the tune of obscure Japanese pop bands (and we won't wait forever, Genghis), but in the meantime we can entertain ourselves with some of the Con's most recent work on new Strikeforce signee Marius "The Raging Demon" Zaromskis.  It's everything we've come to expect from our favorite video editing machine.  The video game-esque music is the perfect compliment to Zaromskis' ridiculous string of head kick KO's, and nothing tells you that the guy has a Street Fighter II-like overconfidence in himself quite like the attempted backflip attack at the 2:37 mark.

Not that we can't understand the reasoning behind it, but we're still a little disappointed in the change of nickname for Zaromskis.  Sure, "The Whitemare" is the kind of thing that might not play in the U.S., but at least it's unique.  "Raging Demon" sounds like a skateboard company started by a group of guys who dropped out of community college.  The very least Strikeforce could do is to give him a nickname that is as quirky and uncommon as his last one, even if he ends up hating it as much as Gegard Mousasi despises his.   

(Rumina Sato vs. Cory Grant, 10/30/09)

You may have been too busy putting the finishing touches on your half-assed pop culture-referencing costume to notice, but Takanori Gomi was one of several Japanese MMA fighters to get back into action at Vale Tudo Japan 2009 in Tokyo this past weekend.  The event also included Rumina Sato, who you see in the above video effectively using those pesky leg kicks to soften up Cory Grant before putting him away, and Takeshi Inoue, who dispatched former Shooto champ Alexandre Franca Nogueira with strikes in the fourth round.

Video of Gomi's five-round battle with American Tony Hervey is after the jump.  It's a pretty fun little scrap, and definitely worth watching.