Fedor Emelianenko emphatically crushed Chael Sonnen’s hopes of winning Bellator’s Heavyweight Grand Prix with a first round TKO victory Saturday night. The result itself wasn’t a shock, but the way in which the fight played out raised some eyebrows.
Fedor made pretty easy work of Chael. Not sure Chael really wanted to be there. #Bellator208 https://t.co/wgWcPWfcRO
— MMATorch (@mmatorch) October 14, 2018
Fedor hurt Sonnen early standing and stuffed a couple of takedown attempts. As the round went on, Sonnen was able to get Fedor down and took top position. From there, Sonnen did a questionable roll that caused him to lose position and allowed Fedor to take over.
Anytime Fedor would lay punches into Sonnen, Sonnen would cover up and do little to fight back. That said, Fedor is a powerful heavyweight who recently knocked out Frank Mir so it’s not as if taking punishment from “The Last Emperor” is an easy task.
“Everything he did hurt,” Sonnen said after the fight. “Everything had bad intentions. I was trying to recover, and I was kind of drowning out there.”
Nonetheless, suspicion was high enough where Bellator CEO Scott Coker was asked about whether there was any fixing of the fight.
“Why would you do that?” Coker asked at the post-fight press conference (via MMAJunkie). “You’re a professional athlete. You’re a fighter. He wants to continue, he wants to go to the next round of the tournament. That’s just all rubbish.”
With Fedor’s past in Pride and Sonnen’s history of being a bit of a shyster, some fans couldn’t help but wonder if the fix was in.
Watch the full fight below then be sure to vote in our Torch poll to have your say.
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