Fedor Emelianenko had some people worried last month when he declared he might retire immediately after getting his face bashed in by Big Foot Silva (watch the video, see the pictures). Luckily that talk didn’t last long — we had heard Fedor was interested in fighting in a Russian sambo event but decided against it. No doubt he needed time to heal from his injuries and get back to his senses. That has happened, and the good news is we’ll be seeing Fedor in the Octagon before too long.
Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker revealed to Sherdog’s Beatdown radio show that “Fedor’s gonna fight sometime in July.” Coker continued “It’s probably toward the end of July or mid-July, but we have fights with Fedor that we’re gonna honor and continue forward.”
Coker also added that Fedor may be used as an alternate for the Heavyweight Grand Prix in which he already was defeated by Silva. Sergei Kharitonov beat Andrei Arlovski in the other quarterfinal, but the other side of the tournament has yet to begin.
The big question is who Emelianenko will fight next, but at this point we have more questions than answers. As always, we’ll have to stay tuned to see the latest developments, but I wouldn’t be wild about seeing Fedor fight another super-sized heavyweight. Who knows? Maybe the Fedor-Dan Henderson fight may actually happen.
