Fedor Emeilianenko vs. Josh Barnett

On my mind right now  is the up and coming Affliction/WAMMA heavy weight championship fight between Fedor Emeilianenko and Josh Barnett. Now, this in my mind is the greatest possible fight over 205. These are the world’s best!

My dilemma is that I like both fighters, for what they do in and outside the ring. Fedor is a great ambassador for the sport, showing that you can be the baddest man on the planet without being  a disrespectful muscle-head that caters to WWE fans. He’s a real mixed martial artist who has both amazing submissions and knockouts.

Josh similarly is a great fighter, not as great as Fedor in my humble opinion, but he is an even greater coach and all around cool guy. For example, the greatest female fighter pound for pound, Megumi Fujii, has been trained by him for years and anyone who’s cool enough to hang out with Mega-Megu, is cool in my book.

SO who do I want to win and who will win?

Oh boy that’s a tough one. It’s  difficult to decide who I like better, but I do believe Fedor is the better fighter. But despite that, I believe  that if anyone today has a chance to beat Fedor, it’s Josh, and if anyone is going to beat Fedor in his career I want it to be Josh.

I believe that, despite his improved striking, Fedor is still better than Josh, and  he is very likely to finish him with one of his insanely powerful striking combinations: Fujita, Slyvia, Zulu. But in all of his fights Fedor has never won by leglock. I saw him try in some older RINGS fights, but they always failed. This is weird considering he’s the best in the world at Sambo. Josh on the other hand loves leg locks and was able to tap the judoka Yoshida with one. If Josh can take the smaller Fedor down and land in his guard, I can already see him falling back for one… or getting armbared. These are a few great possibilities in my mind, but, as always, I pray there won’t be a cut or illegal blow that causes an early stop to the fight.

So in the end, I’m going to be cheering for a good fight. I want to see some good exchanges on their feet, good wrestling, and most of all some sweet submission attempts as well as a concluding one ( hopefully a leg lock from Josh). Here is a press release from Sherdog.com that I recommend.