Fedor Emelianenko has picked a dream fight, and it comes with 10-ounce gloves instead of the open-fingered ones he made famous. The 50-year-old heavyweight icon said he’d be interested in facing Francis Ngannou under boxing rules, and the remarks were making the rounds on r/MMA by Thursday afternoon.
Fedor described it as a dream scenario. He said he has too many injuries to handle MMA at this point, but he’d be willing to take a shot at Ngannou in a boxing ring, and he was careful to add that he was only thinking out loud.
Sportskeeda also ran the comments, quoting Fedor as saying “I’d trade blows with him” and reporting that he had pinpointed a weakness in The Predator’s game. The specifics of that weakness weren’t part of the excerpt circulating Thursday, so take the scouting report on faith for now.
Fedor hasn’t competed in three years. He retired after a first-round loss to Ryan Bader at Bellator 290, closing a career spent mostly in Pride FC, with seven fights in Bellator and none in the UFC. Bloody Elbow reported he isn’t ruling out a return to MMA, which sits a little awkwardly next to his own line about having too many injuries to manage it.
He’s been in a talkative mood. In the same news cycle, Fedor took aim at Dana White in an interview with Ushatayka, accusing the UFC boss of flip-flopping on why the promotion never signed him. “The man talks and always changes his story. He simply doesn’t stand by his words,” Fedor said.
Ngannou, the former UFC champion who knocked out Stipe Miocic, is apparently the heavyweight everybody wants to box. Jake Paul put him on a 15-man hit list of fighters he’d like to face before retiring, according to Bloody Elbow, though Paul’s business partner Nakisa Bidarian said the current talks are with Darren Till for a date in December or early 2027.
The next real fight with Fedor’s fingerprints on it is Nov. 14 at the Coca Cola Arena in Dubai, where his protege Vadim Nemkov (20-2, 1 NC) defends the PFL heavyweight title against Sergei Bilostenniy (15-4). Nemkov hasn’t lost in a decade, going 15 fights unbeaten across RIZIN, Bellator and PFL. “Like Fedor says, fights should end early,” Nemkov said in a PFL release.
My take: I’ve spent years warning people off fighters coming back from long layoffs at short prices, and a 50-year-old who’s been out three years and says he’s too banged up for MMA is about as extreme a version of that as you’ll find. There’s no line to bet because there’s no fight. Fedor himself called it thinking out loud, and nobody has reported a negotiation. If a book ever hangs a number on this, I’ll look at it the way I look at my old 12-leg parlay tickets, with fondness and zero money. The Russian heavyweight I’d actually study is the one fighting in Dubai on Nov. 14, and he’s 20-2.
