It's not a fact at all,are you basing this off the fact that he was one of
80 torch bearers that ran 250 meters at the 2008 Olympics
I would say more people around Russia would know Fedor as the guy that fought infront of Putin a few years ago
Everyone has surely read Interviews with Fedor,where he himself says he can travel most places in Russia without being bothered,there's not a street in the US that Brock could walk down without attracting attention.
It could of,it should of,but the bottom line is,it just isn't,there just isn't the interest in MMA in Russia at the moment,and that's why M-1 have constantly looked to join the western markets instead of concentrating on cornering an untapped market that they just happen to come from.
You don't have to read pieces by US journalists to get an Idea that running a big MMA show in Russia just isn't a great Idea,that's why Bodog ST Petersburg bombed,they ran it as a PPV a got nearly zero buys from the Russian public.
If it's not happened in Russia,especially while there are a team of guys that can only manage to run a couple of small M-1 events there a year,who are heavily invested in MMA,who not only know the ins and outs of the TV side and behind the scenes of running MMA events,but they also have there own stable of fighters ready to fight,aswell as having Russia's biggest MMA star to front it,you know there either isn't the interest,they can't attract a TV provider,they can't attract the sponsors or they just simply can't make a profit from running big shows in Russia.
I didn't say he was paying himself,I meant that I doubt this show in Russia would even clear the amount of money Fedor was getting from one fight under his Strikeforce contract,never mind make MILLIONS.
Heres a statement from a Russian journalist,who just happens to work for Russia's largest sports newspaper
“Emelianenko is a huge star, on par with Sharapova and Ovechkin,” said Pavel Lysenkov, a journalist with Sovietsky Sport, Russia’s premier sports newspaper, referring to the tennis star Maria Sharapova and the N.H.L. star Alexander Ovechkin. (Comparisons with Mike Tyson of the 1980s also abound.)
“But I’m very surprised that in Russia very few people know him.”
Lysenkov and others said that this was probably because television coverage of mixed martial arts is practically nonexistent in Russia and that the sport, which came to St. Petersburg in the mid-1990s, remains largely confined to Russia’s northern capital.
That the sport is not showcased in the Olympics also could detract from its legitimacy in the eyes of many Russians.
And much of Emelianenko’s popularity problems at home may have to do with the fighter himself: he is nonchalant when it comes to self-promotion, and he lives a cloistered life out of the ring in Stary Oskol, his hometown, which is nearly 300 miles south of Moscow.
“I like living here at home much better; I like my own city,” Emelianenko, 32, said of the small industrial city where he has lived since age 2 after moving with his family from what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine.
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