The whole MMA community is excited about the showdown between Fedor Emelianenko and Frank Mir at Bellator 198. It will mark the return of both Fedor and Mir into the cage. While Mir will be fighting after a break of two years, Fedor comes into the fight on the back of a defeat against Matt Mitrione.
The fight with Mitrione was Fedor’s debut in Bellator and many expected the Russian to retire after it. During the recent appearance on MMA hour, Fedor revealed whether or not he considered retirement after the defeat.
“After the fight with Matt Mitrione I didn’t consider and I didn’t think about retiring. I was thinking that I was planning to continue fighting. Things happen.” He said.
Interestingly, he had once retired from the sport back in 2012 when he secured a first-round knockout win against Pedro Rizzo. He then returned in 2015 and went on to get two more wins before losing to Mitrione.
The loss against Mitrione, meanwhile, will serve as a great motivator ahead of the weekend’s fight.
“It’s difficult to say because always when I work out I try to work 100-percent. I cannot say if I became more aggressive or less aggressive and since I understand my coaches, they always want to see their sportsmen more aggressive, more strong, greater, and they want to see their sportsmen that way for a very long time, for more years.” He said.
The perks of the tournament
The 41-year-old then went on to talk about the tournament and mentioned that such tournaments always attract the fans.
“It’s always been that such great tournaments would attract a lot of attention. They were always very interesting, very exciting. It’s always very interesting to see and to find out who is the strongest, who is the fastest, who is the best one. For me, that’s a great joy and happiness to be a part of that tournament and to participate in that tournament and to compete with such great and famous sportsmen, sportsmen with great titles, so I’m very happy to be in this tournament,” he added.