MiddleEasy sinks their teeth into something and much like a rabid dog, refuses to let go. After running a story a while back with talk of Fedor Emelianenko possibly retiring, which M-1 refuted, Zeus came across this rather interesting tidbit while looking through a translation.
Fedor Emelianenko: (After a long pause) “Я не хочу так далеко забегать вперед. Я думаю только о предстоящем бое с Фабрисио вЕрдумом. Всё будет зависеть от того, как я в нем выступлю. Вот. У меня осталось два боя по контракту, дальше будем смотреть. Если буду чувствовать себя хорошо, то будем заключать новый контракт. Вот. Нооо… Я ВСЁ БОЛЬШЕ ДУМАЮ УЖЕ ОБ УХОДЕ.”
Don’t speak Russian? I don’t, either. The rough translation that I get for the last line is that he will “go away” if he is not content. Of course, that is what Google told me. So let Zeus fill you in on the rest:
The part in bold is what Steven Bash failed to translate. In English, it reads: “If I will feel good, I will sign a new contract. But, I am more and more thinking about retiring”. There was also a part in the conference call where Fedor directly blames Strikeforce for not having his fight in April. Steven Bash translated this as: “It was between Strikeforce management and Vadim Finkelstein to decide”.
The audio is there for anyone to listen to. In no way is this fabricated. We’ve been on this ‘Fedor retirement story’ earlier this month when we broke the news that Fedor will be running for political office and that he was considering retirement. When other media outlets contacted M-1 Global for a clarification, they confirmed Fedor’s run for office but completely denied that Fedor may retire.
The plot thickens.