FanHouse Antonio Rodrigo Nogu...

All this week FanHouse looks forward to Fedor Emelianenko's fight against Tim Sylvia by reliving Fedor's career history. This is the second installment. You can find the first article here.

After vanquishing his toughest opponent to capture the Pride heavyweight belt, Fedor Emelianenko found himself in the unusual position of being the favorite. His utter destruction of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira had put the rest of the world on notice that this would be a tough champion to dethrone. There remained several top contenders for Fedor's belt ... but he wouldn't fight any of them anytime soon.

Like RINGS before it, the Pride Fighting Championship had its roots in pro wrestling, which meant that a match's entertainment value was equal or more important than its competitive value. A matchup was made not because the two fighters were evenly matched, were top contenders, or even in the same weight class. The fighters were decided based on what would make for the best show for a native Japanese audience. As they often did when they had a foreign-born champion, Pride gave a title shot to a Japanese fighter who seemed severely overmatched.