Fedor Emelianenko, the man who still has to be regarded as the most successful heavyweight fighter in MMA history, returns on Saturday night to the exact spot where he went from myth to human.
On June 26, 2010, in just his second fight with Strikeforce, Emelianenko was facing Fabricio Werdum in San Jose, Calif., at what was then the HP Pavilion and is now the SAP Center, a hotbed for MMA for more than a decade that had housed some of the most historically significant fights in history. By no means was the fight expected to be one-sided, as Werdum was among the most skilled heavyweights in the sport and had been in the ring and cage with top competition for years.