The best fighter in the history of MMA and he'll probably never fight in the UFC.

 

Imagine a pro quarterback with Peyton Manning's talent, playing up north in the CFL instead of the NFL. Or picture Tiger Woods shunning the PGA and all the major championships to star in the second-string Nationwide Tour. It may sound ridiculous, but the fast-growing, wildly popular sport of mixed martial arts (MMA) is grappling with such an unthinkable, uncomfortable scenario.

 

 

And it couldn't come at a worse time. Just as the sport's premier league, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, prepares to stage its milestone UFC 100 event in Las Vegas this Saturday — which is expected to attract more than one million pay-per-view purchases — the top fighter in the world has no plans to participate. Instead of slugging it out in Sin City, Fedor Emelianenko, 32, will be training in a small Russian mining town 385 miles south of Moscow, preparing for an August 1 pay-per-view fight in Anaheim, Calif., against former UFC champion Josh Barnett. That fight is being co-promoted by M-1 Global, the Amsterdam-based organization in which Fedor has an ownership stake, and Affliction Entertainment, an upstart UFC challenger whose financial backers include Donald Trump and Mark Cuban (Cuban's cable network, HDNet, televises Affliction fights). Why isn't Fedor fighting for the more established brand? "The UFC wants his mind, his soul, his body," says Joost Raimond, chief operating officer for M-1 Global.

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http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1909703,00.html