You don't even need to know any Korean.
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Fujita Vs. Silva
Oh boy oh boy.

Unstoppable force vs. Immovable object. Although a more apt comparison would be "a fighter whose will to fight is only matched by his aggression" vs "a fighter whose will to fight is only matched by his skull's thickness".

Neither one of these guys will quit. Look at any number of silva fights, where he's been smashed right in the face, dropped, yet kept trying to kill the other guy. The best one is the shot Tito dropped him with, because it seriously looks like silva is about to try to bite off his ankles after face-planting. The guy will fight you until you make it physically impossible for him to do it. Same thing with Fujita; he's never been stunned like Silva has, but he's walked through vicious prolonged beatings vs. shamrock and thompson, and eaten monster shots from fedor and crocop. This fight could get ugly, with silva slowly smashing all the skin of fujita's face and fighting a screaming skull. Or Fujita could just deliver another brutal mugger beating like he did to Sapp, or just stretch silva like happened to Ibrahim.

Both of these fighters bring an incredible amount of power to the table.

Wand's power punching power and ruthlessness are off the scale. Knocking out Quinton Jackson is no mean feat, as many people forget. Rampage is a guy who took huge shots from Kevin Randleman (who has massive punching power if not technique, ask Ninja or Crocop) and Igor (nothing need be said) and kept fighting--even in the Shogun stoppage his head was clear, he just gave up due to his rib injury. And Kondo has only been finished in a couple of his 70+ fights. Silva does this by simply beating a man with everything he can, until that man stops moving. Silva punches extremely hard, and anyone who doubts that he can stop any man in the business given the chance (Hunt and Noguiera included) is a fool. Fujita may have a hard head, but he's still mortal, and an accumulation of strikes will put him out of this fight if he lets Silva tee off. And he just might, lacking a defense other than his football-helmet like head and wrestling ability. It's become fashionable to criticise silva's aggression after his fights with Arona, but it is extremely difficult to fight aggressively when a man is pining you to the floor as hard as he can. Which may happen again vs. Fujita, given the Yvel fight. Put Silva in there with a BJJ guy with no wrestling or an inferior striker, and he will throw until his arms fall off, I guarantee.

Fujita's power is his strength and arm power. This guy muscled SAPP around the ring, and stood up to James thompson too. He will just keep coming at guys and grab hold of them, making them deal with his strength, until he has worn them down and can smash them with an extremely primitive array of strikes that look like the monkey smashing the other with a bone in the "Dawn of Man" segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey. You know I'm right. It's hard to gauge against a monster like Thompson, but in his last fight Fujita didn't seem to have the same kind of strength he used to, weighing in a good deal lighter too. Silva is extremely strong for a middleweight, but I think Fujita is still going to have little problem powering him around the ring, especially given that Silva's wrestling is about on par with Noguiera's.

The thing so many people ignore about Fujita is that he has extreme KO power. Look at what he did to Fedor's head in slow-motion, or the punch that finally put down Thompson, or the one that nearly killed Ibrahim. All of those punches were thrown starting down at Fujita's hip, but he didn't turn into them or use his leg strength. He simple picked up his hand, and used his awesome upper body strength to sling it to the other side of the guy's head. This guy can KO a man easily, and he's hard-nosed enough to punch through punches and rely on his chin. It's entirely feasible that we see Wanderlei dropped by such a punch and then hammerfisted into unconciousness.

However I feel the most likely outcome is that Wanderlei uses his superior speed to set up strike after strike, and unloads an unholy barrage to eventually stop the fight, either on a cut or a TKO, when Fujita gets disoriented and doesn't defend himself. I do not expect him to knock Fujita out cold, although of Fujita finishes him, that's how it's going to be. If this becomes a brawl, both men have suffered massive cuts before, especially Silva, so one could open up again and create another unsatisfying cut stoppage. Given both guy's will to fight, and Silva's reasonable ability to counter groundwork and get back up, I expect this will be a fight, not another Yvel control session from Fujita, and Wanderlei is a finish-or-be-finished fighter when he's not on his back. But we never know what will happen until it happens, and that's why they fight.

The Case for Bob Sapp

In the serious MMA/K-1 fanbase, Sapp is an almost universally reviled character. He's a giant-sized, steroid-using buffoon, he's an untalented fighter, a marketing gimmick. He's a failed NFL player who doesn't train much and gives up easily. Some of this is certainly true.

Sapp is also a man making a living; he was essentially broke before he started with K-1, and he knows he doesn't have the skills to be a fighter when his popularity receeds. So who can fault him for trying to make money to support himself, in any way he can?

But I won't be talking about the human side of this story, that's not why we're here. I would argue that Sapp is good for mma.

First of all, Sapp is a character. That doesn't translate to exciting fights, but it does produce emotional investment in his fights. Fedor doesn't cower and cover up for major portions of his fights, or display amateur-level skills, but he doesn't bite the head off crocop dolls prior to fights either. It's the Tito effect - tito runs his mouth and people develop an emotional investment in the guy. Either they enjoy seeing the brash guy back up his loudmouth statements, or they enjoy seeing Chuck Liddell smash his mouth shut. Keeps it interesting.

However, that's not the reason to keep Sapp around and continue to pay him big bucks. Lebanner is big and brash and cartoonish, and the guy can fight. Rampage and Gary Goodridge are quite capable of playing black stereotypes to a Japanese audience that eats it up, and they are both far better fighters than Bob.

What Bob Sapp does, is what Royce Gracie did in '93. He destroys the myth of the big man. Of course, Sapp is on the other end of the table, so he's like an inverse Royce, but still.

Hollywood loves the big man. The big man is invincible; Indiana Jones can't hurt him with a punch, he has to wait for the plane propellor; Jackie Chan must similarly outwit enormous foes who are immune to his strikes. However, when we see a much smaller Ray Sefo or Mirko Crocop absolutely blasting Sapp, it means that training is still better than size. For one, it establishes the guys who beat the Beast as certified badasses. Look at the respect that Minotauro gets for his absolutely incredible performance vs. Sapp. It's good to see our favorite fighters tested by a force of nature like Sapp.

He isn't just a freakshow--he brings freakshow talents in with him- his incredible size and strength. He's a danger to anyone they put in the ring with him-ask Hoost. (dodgy officiating aside, Hoost was in rough shape). A Sapp fight isn't going to be a technical masterwork, but it WILL be impressive, no matter who wins.

He deserves to be there more than a lot of warmed-over TUF failures, or legends who are past it like Sakuraba (We can only hope that K-1 has the brains to take a page from Shooto's book and put Saku in grappling-only exhibition matches or hand him gentler matches than Matt Hamill is going to get). Besides, I think that in the fight game today there is no greater threat than Bob Sapp to Fedor Emelenienko.

So, to start off with. Here's one to boil your noodle.

Have you ever seen Fedor make a mistake? I'm not the BJJ guy some are, so maybe his grappling is more in the Russian style than a tight technical Brazillian style, but still. Has he ever tried something to have it countered, failed in a takedown to land in a bad position? (I'm not talking about being taken down)

Whenever he does anything, he does it correctly, and whenever he tries something, he succeeds. That's pretty scary.

The only miscalculation I can think of is him getting sloppy vs. Fujita in the standup. Yeah I know, real insight there. But still. I mean, Herring swept him once or twice, and Herring has terrible wrestling (both statements are true of Nogueira too), but he was never in a really bad position.

Call me on it if I'm wrong.