submission: armbar

Matt Hughes only experienced defeat twice in his first 23 fights — a stat that's even more remarkable when you consider that both losses came from a dude named Dennis Hallman, who was able to submit Hughes within the first 20 seconds of each match. This clip from UFC 29 presents the entire saga (fight #2 starts at the 5:30 mark). Hallman didn't go on to beat any other MMA legends, but he's still active in the game, winning his last fight at Strikeforce in November, and compiling a 2-1 record in the IFL in 2006.

We didn't write much about it in the liveblog because it was pretty much over before it began and it didn't end any differently than anyone expected. But here's the video evidence of the last great (?) fight of 2007. Pause the vid at the 1:29 mark for the best representation of the size difference. Fedor is just a toy that Hong is playing with. And vice-versa, of course...

Bob Sapp vs. Antonio "Minotauro" Nogueira, at PRIDE Shockwave (8/28/02).

I forgot to mention one very important aspect of last night's M-1 press conference — the gift bag, which contained an M-1 Global promo t-shirt (they had mediums!) and a French-language highlight DVD called Absolute Fedor. I've spent the majority of the afternoon watching this DVD while eating leftover pizza. (Condolences to those readers who have to work in an office every day, and deal with inept bosses and co-workers, and who have to actually get dressed in the morning. Maybe you should try developing specialized skills?)

Anyway, it's pretty stunning to watch all of Emelianenko's victories one after the other, and I wanted to post a couple of them since today is all about Fedor. The first is his meeting with Mark Coleman at PRIDE GP 2004, and the second is against Kazuyuki Fujita at PRIDE 26 in June 2003 (with appropriately off-the-wall introduction and commentary by my personal hero, Bas Rutten). Both of these fights illustrate what I think is the key to Emelianenko's dominant success in MMA. It's not just that his power punches are stronger than everyone else's and his ground game is technically perfect. It's that even when he's nearly asleep from a choke-hold or a hard shot to the face (as you'll see in these videos), he manages to remain calm and stick to his game plan until he figures out a way to win. You'll also notice that when a guy loses to Fedor, he tends to stay on the mat for a while...