It's Official: Fedor Emelianenko Will Return for Totally Meaningless Fight

The longer the tale of Fedor Emelianenko goes on the more I think it really is better to burn out than to fade away. No matter that neither Neil Young nor Johnny Rotten could actually pull it off, Fedor surely could for he was altogether a different kind of beast: a hero, a legend, a walking MMA contradiction—the divine athlete who looked like a middle-age dock worker. And for me and many others like me he was the only possible introduction to the dark, seedy, repellent world of competitive cage-fighting: the everyman who belied every tattooed, snarling, vicious stereotype we had and opened the door to a great and lasting love affair.

Imagine now if Emelianenko had retired on November 7, 2009, after knocking out Brett Rodgers in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, or 10 months earlier, after knocking out Andrei Arlovski in Anaheim, California, or—even better—right after making his long-awaited American debut against Tim Sylvia in July 2008. Imagine if he hadn't pushed his luck and his legend and his 31-0 record, first against Fabricio Werdum then Antonio Silva and finally Dan Henderson, who, in succession, knocked the Last Emperor off his perch and denied fans the perfection they'd cherished and relied on for so long. Failing that, imagine if Fedor hadn't come back after those losses just to score three mildly redemptive wins over increasingly mediocre competition before finally calling it a career. Imagine if Fedor had retired either perfect or tragic. What a myth he'd still be.

But Fedor never really went in for myths about himself, did he? When he lost to Werdum it was us mourning the spotlessness of his record, not him. And if he felt at all embarrassed about the final three wins of his career he never showed it. We'd like to look back and believe that what made Fedor so compelling was his perfection, but the truth is that the secret to his magnetism was just how imperfect he was. His humanity was what made him, not his imperviousness. His round belly and his receding hairline and his indifference to self-promotion and the trappings of fame. Even the fact that he was often fighting back from the brink of disaster made him someone you could identify with. He was what Shakespeare would have called a "warrior for the working day." The people's champion despite the perfection of his record, not because of it. Human all the way.

Which made his losses to Werdum and Silva and Henderson feel somehow unnecessary. Fedor didn't need to have his humanity and his imperfection proven: His humanity and imperfection had always been his most compelling traits. And besides, not everything good needs to be dashed in the name of the cold reality. Sometimes it's good to keep our gilded memories, our artistic delusions, no matter what nonsense they're built on. Humans need myths, even if the myths themselves want nothing to do with them. Fedor, for a particular kind of MMA fan, was something to believe in.

Now that we know that Emelianenko will be making his long-awaited and long-feared comeback against a man most of us never heard of, longtime kickboxer and MMA rookie Jaideep Singh, the collapse of the myth feels complete. I revered Fedor the Unconquered Conquerer and my heart broke for Fedor the Defeated and I could feel a sense of melancholic admiration for Fedor the Victor in Twilight, but I can't seem to summon any feelings at all for Fedor Who's Returning From Retirement to Fight Jaideep Singh, not while Werdum, Silva, Cain Velasquez, Junior dos Santos, and dozens of other more meaningful fights are out in the world waiting for him. There's no poetry to this latest chapter in Fedor's career, no myth, which might be fine for Fedor but it doesn't work for me. Which makes this just one more opportunity for me (and thousands of other Fedor fans) to paint the man with our own brush and curse him for not being the man we hoped he was.

Maybe there's a lesson here. We will inevitably be disappointed by those we've raised up to worship. Heroes are designed to let you down. It's a lesson every child learns, and shame on me for having to learn it again in my late 30s. The fact is I had and have no journalistic objectivity when it comes to him. I wanted Fedor Emelianenko to win the same way I wanted him to disappear into the ether (on a chariot) after that first loss: for poetry's sake. _And I don't want him to come _back—n__ot _to fight Jaideep Singh._ Not to fight anyone! And thus Fedor remains MMA's most potent emotional force, the man who creates meaning by winning, by losing, by disappearing, and by coming back again. He's the blank slate where we find whatever we're looking for: love, hope, heartbreak, beauty, perfection, and, finally, disappointment.