"The Last Emperor" broaches the bliss of marriage and what he picked up during his brief staredown with Rogers at a pre-fight press conference held Thursday in Chicago.
Friday, November 6 12:57 pm PT: Welterweight prospect Shamar Bailey wants to revisit the one blemish that scars an otherwise perfect resume.
The 27-year-old Indianapolis firefighter will face UFC castoff John Kolosci at Strikeforce/M-1 Global “Fedor vs. Rogers” this Saturday at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates. I’ll. He looks back at his April 2008 loss to unbeaten welterweight Roger Bowling with contempt. Bowling stopped Bailey on first-round strikes in the Revolution Fight League “Hostile Takeover” main event in Louisville, Ky.
“I learned a couple of things,” Bailey said. “He never touched me when we were on our feet. I slipped. He got on top of me, hit me a few times and the referee stopped the fight. People who were there won’t say anything different.
Bailey may get his shot at redemption inside Strikeforce. The San Jose, Calif.-based promotion has agreed to terms on a contract with Bowling. Should Bailey pass his first test against Kolosci, the stage could be set for a rematch. Bowling has finished all six of his opponents, including a nine-second knockout of International Fight League veteran Seth Baczynski in March.
“He’s making a name off me,” Bailey said. “We definitely need a rematch. If I were him, I would want to know I was better.”
Because Saturday’s network television broadcast of Strikeforce pre-empts “CSI: NY,” we have, in a sense, already won. But event producers may not be satisfied with paving over the career of Skeet Ulrich: what they really want is to snag an appreciable share of the coveted 18-49 male demo, that segment of the population most likely to enjoy repeated punches to the head and advertisements for beef jerky.
To attract them, CBS and Strikeforce are hoping the monosyllabic Russian Fedor Emelianenko will outgrow his cult popularity among tape collectors to become a mass-audience draw. On their side: he’s exciting, dangerous, and far less likely than Kimbo Slice to be knocked out by a man in a dress.
Working against them: he’s a bit flabby, and has never seen the inside of a tattoo shop.
Like Slice before him, Emelianenko appears to be gaining notoriety in the farm league known as YouTube.
