Affliction and everything after…

Fedor is always ready to fight. Even at the park!

So Affliction has called it quits in the fight promotion business after the cancellation of their upcoming pay-per-view. While failing to find a suitable victim for their heavyweight champ Fedor Emelianenko – after Josh Barnett was revealed to be on the juice! – the company realized they were bleeding cash by the second and tapped out, thus proving once again that it’s impossible for an MMA promoter in the States to run up against the UFC. Elite couldn’t do it with a primetime network TV deal, Bodog couldn’t do it will a reckless billionaire investor and Affliction couldn’t do it with Fedor  as their champion.

Jonathan Snowden at mmapayout.com has his own compelling theory as to what killed Affliction however – he blames Randy Couture.

The upside of all of this is that it could pave wave the way for Fedor to fight Brock Lesnar to determine the true undisputed heavyweight champion. Which would be insane. Fedor’s team is reportedly in the US and willing to meet with UFC boss Dana White. What happens now will depend not on strength or fighting styles, but upon money and the big Russian’s willingness to cede control of his career to White’s American empire.

To deal with Fedor is to deal with his entourage as well as the numerous strings they’ve already attached. White would be nuts to sign any fighter – let alone one who might beat his champ – to a one fight contract. But Fedor wants to be able to make his own decisions about who to fight, not have his fight card handed to him by a boss. It’s a unique situation and one that would never exist were it not for the fact that White sees two things in Fedor: dollar bills and perhaps the greatest heavyweight fighter of all time.

Fedor vs. Hong Man Choi

Misawa

Mitsuharu Misawa

Last Saturday, just as Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” was released in the land of the rising sun, tragedy struck as Japanese wrestling legend Misawa died in the ring. And though the story of a past-his-prime wrestler (Misawa was 46) pushing himself to the point of breaking may draw comparison to Aronofsky’s film, that’s about all Mitsuharu Misawa had in common with “Randy the Ram.”

A former high school wrestler, Misawa rose to fame in Japan’s puroresu world in the 1980s as the second Tiger Mask. After removing the mask mid-match in 1990, Misawa would rise in popularity, becoming one of, if not the most popular wrestler in Japan for the next decade.

In 2000 Misawa formed Pro Wrestling NOAH, an organization revered around the wrestling world for the quality of it’s in-ring action and talent. Misawa was fighting in a tag-team match in the main event at a NOAH show in Hiroshima when he took a back suplex that rendered him unconscious and which caused the immediate spinal cord damage that killed him.

To call Mitsuharu Misawa a great wrestler is to understate the case. Renowned pro-wrestling critic and reporter Dave Meltzer has been reviewing matches from around the world since the early 1980s. In that time he has awarded 65 matches a 5-star rating. 24 of those matches featured Misawa. A multi-time world champion who developed an international reputation among fans despite rarely wrestling outside of Japan, Misawa built his reputation not with hype, catchphrases or elaborate gimmicks, but with the quality of his work, his connection with the fans and above all, his love and passion for wrestling.

That wrestling somehow isn’t “real” or that it is in some way fraudulent or “fake” is both the most common and the least pertinent criticism of the art. Those who wish to dismiss it out of hand will point to the pre-determined outcomes as reason enough. But wrestling is not sport. It is theatre, a spectacle of athletics that uses sport as it’s canvas upon which to paint stories of pain and hope and victory and loss.

Mitsuharu Misawa was an artist who died in the creation of his art and who will continue to inspire others as the legacy of his work and his contributions to the form continue to influence and inspire the next generation.

Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi - 5 Star Classic