NEW YORK (AP) — Fedor Emelianenko barely speaks a lick of English. He rarely smiles. When he steps inside a ring or cage, he looks bored, as if he'd rather be reading a book.
Yet on a frigid Manhattan morning, hundreds of mixed martial arts fans formed a line that snaked through Times Square just to see him. They spent six hours waiting for their six seconds, the time it took him to scribble his name on a photograph or pose for a picture.
Why did they do it? Because he just might be the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.
"He just has that X-factor," said Scott Coker, who runs the Strikeforce promotion for which Emelianenko currently fights. "When you're an actor or an actress, or a fighter, you just have that charisma. He's not a flamboyant character, but people just love him."
Emelianenko is the biggest reason Strikeforce is expecting a sellout crowd when it stages the opening two bouts of its eight-man heavyweight Grand Prix on Saturday at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey. He faces Brazilian star Antonio Silva in the main event, and former UFC champion Andrei Arlovski takes on Sergei Kharitonov in the other tournament match.
The other two quarterfinals are tentatively scheduled for April, pitting Alistair Overeem against Fabricio Werdum and Josh Barnett versus Brett Rogers.
The favorite, though, is the mysterious man from Stary Oskol, Russia.
Emelianenko doesn't look the part of a mixed martial arts icon. He stands barely 6-feet tall and weighs about 105 kilograms (230 pounds), which means he often gives up roughly the weight of a microwave oven to the guy standing across from him. He doesn't have bodybuilder-like biceps and six-pack abs, and his deepset eyes and whisperlike voice make it seem as if he's half asleep.
Nor does he act and sound like a fighter. He exudes humility, trusts in his Orthodox Christian faith, and offers sincere praise for just about everyone he faces.
"In any nation, if you treat people with respect and kindness, they'll treat you like that," Emelianenko said through a translator. "People who are successful in movies or music, they get excited about the showbiz, and they very often lose their individuality and personality. They forget who they are. I've always tried to remember who I am."
Even when the bell rings, his demeanor remains placid. He doesn't rush across the ring, or rush to do much of anything. He is almost clinical in his craft, breaking down opponents with pinpoint punching, brutal kicks and a ground game that either makes you quit or wish you did.
"Everybody loves his fighter heart," said Rogers, who lost to him by knockout two years ago. "He's been in the game a long time, and people respect that."
Born in the former Soviet Union, Emelianenko went through high school and a trade school, just like anybody else. He did his mandatory military service in the Russian Army in the late 1990s, all the while training in a variety of martial arts.
His background is Sambo, developed by the Soviet Red Army to help soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. It has roots in judo and karate, and Emelianenko is among the best in the world.
He turned to MMA in 2000, for a Japanese promotion called RINGS, before the UFC had forced the sport into the public consciousness in the United States. He began racking up victories like Mike Tyson in his prime, the only questions when and how, not who would win. The lone blemish in more than a decade came from an illegal elbow that opened a cut and kept Fedor from finishing.
"The things I look for is a guy that puts butts in seats, drives TV ratings, gets media hype, and the last thing is put on a great fight," Coker said. "He does all of those things."
Coker was banking on it when he signed Emelianenko to his fledgling promotion.
Emelianenko had fought mostly in Japan, and it was widely believed he eventually would land in the more established UFC. Instead, Emelianenko joined up with Strikeforce a couple years ago, in part because Coker agreed to co-promote with M-1 Global, of which the fighter is part owner.
He's been the biggest reason that Strikeforce has became a major player in the sport.
"When you see him in the cage, he's a different guy, but when he fights, he brings it," Coker said. "I've never seen the guy in a boring fight, and that's very rare."
Just about as rare as seeing him lose.
Emelianenko had gone an unheard-of 29 straight fights without a loss, beating Arlovski by knockout, and former champions like Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera, Mark Coleman and Tim Sylvia along the way. Few of the bouts had even been close. Then last June, in San Jose, California, Werdum used his jiujitsu expertise to catch Emelianenko in a triangle armbar and force him to submit.
The defeat sent ripples through the close-knit martial arts world, brutally lifting what had become a veil of perfection. Emelianenko was, in fact, not invincible.
Now he's on the comeback trail, which demonstrates how quickly things can change.
He faces a fighter in Silva who has won his last two matches, and at 6-foot-4 and 120 kilograms (265 pounds), will have a significant size advantage. Emelianenko knows he'll get everything he can handle from the jiujitsu, judo and karate black belt, and that the fans who stuff the Izod Center will be wondering whether he can rebound from defeat.
"Fedor is a great fighter and a great person," Silva said, "but if you want to rise to the top you have to beat the best, and Fedor is definitely still one of the very best."
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