Bellator light heavyweight champion Vadim Nemkov revealed that Fedor Emelianenko was basically unprepared going into his last MMA outing. He revealed how Fedor had VISA problems and barely trained 2 weeks.
Many MMA fans would agree that Fedor Emelianenko is the best heavyweight mixed martial artist of all time. The 46-year-old Russian was undefeated for 10 years from 2001 to 2010. He also defeated most of his opponents via finishes and became world champion in various MMA promotions such as PRIDE and Bellator MMA.
Fedor Emelianenko ended his long mixed martial arts career on February 4. “The Last Emperor” faced Ryan Bader and headlined Bellator 290 event. Bader won quickly and easily. He dominated the game as soon as it started. In the middle of the first round, he layered on ground-and-pound and the ref halted the match, marking Bader as the winner via TKO.
After the main event, they celebrated his retirement with Emelianenko putting his gloves in the cage. Many fans didn’t hope much on Emelianenko considering his old age. But, one of his students, Vadim Nemkov, revealed that Fedor Emelianenko didn’t have enough preparation when going for his last MMA bout.
In an interview with Russian channel Sport24, Nemkov revealed that Emelianenko had several Visa problems that took a lot of time.
“Unfortunately Fedor wasn’t able to prepare properly for this fight. He was dealing with a back injury and there were issues with getting his visa- he first had to fly to Bahrain to apply for Visa and that didn’t work out so Fedor then had to fly to Armenia to get his visa.” Nemkov said (Sherdog).
Not just that, with such a short time left before the event kicked off, Emelianenko also had to train while suffering a back injury.
“By the time Fedor figured out the visa situation and got back to training there were only two weeks left until the fight and the injury in his back didn’t allow him to train. I knew that he didn’t have much of a chance in this fight outside of landing a lucky punch.” Nemkov said.