M-1 GLOBAL: BATTLE OF THE LEGENDS - FEDOR VS MONSON was held Sunday, November 20, 2011, at the Olympic Arena in Moscow, Russia.
In the main event, Fedor "The Last Emperor" Emelianenko broke a 3-fight losing streak with a unanimous decision victory over former UFC heavyweight title contender Jeff "The Snowman" Monson. Fighting in his home country with his close friend Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the audience, we saw a tentative Fedor Emelianenko for the first time. After going undefeated in MMA for a decade, Fedor lost 3 straight fights in Strikeforce and was released from the UFC's sister promotion earlier this year.
Fedor was not about to lose 4 straight fights, so he stayed away from any grappling with Jeff Monson. Fedor continually dropped Monson with punches/Monson flopped to the ground after being punched, but Fedor flat out refused to follow Monson to the mat. Since all Monson wanted to do was grapple, this made for an awkward and tedious fight. Monson offered absolutely nothing in the striking department, and continually failed at takedowns, so Fedor just teed off on him from a distance for fifteen minutes like he was a human punching bag. Monson served his purpose and was likely compensated well for his job. Fedor is now officially off the schneid, but the PRIDE legend surely didn't win over any of his numerous detractors.
The announcing duties for this PPV were handled by Benny Ricardo and Jeremy Horn. Ricardo pronounced Fedor Emelianenko's name wrong the entire night, referred to the promotion as "M Global" a couple of times, and just generally said goofball stuff and made bizarre analogies and uninformed observations for the entire show. Ricardo's performance was so bad that I could see it being mistaken for some sort of satirical genius. From a production and commentary standpoint, this was literally one of the worst MMA PPVs that I've ever witnessed. The fights, however, other than the main event, were really good and there were plenty of vicious knockouts.
M1 GLOBAL: FEDOR VS MONSON
Fedor Emelianenko (32-4) won by UD over Jeff Monson (42-13)
[15:00] - 3 Rounds
{Lightweight Championship}
Daniel Weichel (28-7) won by TKO over Jose Figueroa (10-5)
Round 1 - punches
Alexander Yakovlev (13-3) won by TKO over Juan Manuel Suarez (8-1)
Round 2 - punches
Yuri Ivlev (18-7) won by TKO over Jerome Bouisson (9-2)
Round 1 - punch
Mairbek Taisumov (16-3) won by KO over Josh Thorpe (10-7)
Round 2 - punches
Albert Duraev (2-0) won by SUB over Xavier Foupa-Pokam (21-17)
Round 2 - triangle choke
Alexander Volkov (14-3) won by KO over Arsen Abdulkerimov (4-2)
Round 1
Salim Davidov (3-0) won by UD over Sergey Kornev (9-2)
[15:00] - 3 Rounds
Mikhail Malyutin (19-10) won by KO over Seydina Seck (13-7)
Round 1
Updated MMA win-loss records with total fight time in brackets.
UD = Unanimous Decision SUB = Submission
