Lost In Translation: Fedor Wants Two More Fights On ‘Retirement Tour’

Esther Lin – MMA Fighting

News of Fedor’s retirement were premature on account of a translation error following his win against Quinton Jackson at Bellator 237.

Fedor Emelianenko returned to Japan last night, knocking out Quinton Jackson in the first round of their fight at Bellator 237 (watch the highlights here). After it sounded like “The Last Emperor” hung up his gloves, but during a post-fight media scrum Fedor’s translator revealed he misinterpreted the Russian heavyweight’s statement.

”I want to take responsibility for that,” the translator said. “The way he said it is, right now he’s doing the tour, it’s his final fights and he wants to do a fight in Japan, a fight in the United States, a fight in Russia. So for Japan, that was his win and retirement fight in Japan. So he’s not retiring, so it’s my – I take responsibility, I’m sorry if I didn’t translate. I don’t want things to be read out of context.”

But when pressed on those two final fights, Emelianenko was unusually coy.

”We’ll see,” Fedor said simply.

”We’ll see how he feels,” his translator said. “So for this particular day, that’s his plan: two more fights. But we’ll see how he feels, how he recovers. He wants to take this time with his family, spend some time with his family. And then he wants to get back with Bellator and discuss with them when would be the appropriate time to discuss exactly what time they take to have another fight and final fight. So he doesn’t know exactly how long it will take.”

As for how he felt the fight with Quinton Jackson went?

”He actually thought that originally, half of he fight would end up on the ground,” Emelianenko’s translator explained. “But as soon as he got into the cage he started to feel he was faster than Rampage. He started to feel that edge and it didn’t make no sense to take it to the ground so that’s why he kept it up. Rampage has tremendous experience, lots of fights and lots of victories. And one thing, that’s for sure, is a heavy punch. It was clear that at no point could he get caught with that punch because that’s the knockout punch. So I had to be very wary. He always does a great job covering up and that was one of the dangers, not to get into a close quarters fight.”

”It was a good stoppage because he felt he would just get on top of him and actually start to deliver very heavy punches, as much as necessary. Right after my punch he just collapsed and went face down. There was no necessity for extra.”