FBI probes Fedor Emelianenko for Donald Trump POTUS links at Bellator event in Chicago. Gareth A Davies reports from Chicago, Ill.
Fedor Emelianenko was expecting to see Frank Mir in the Windy City. What he wasn’t expecting was the FBI to show up and knock on the door of his hotel suite here. No one knows why, and no one wants to discuss it.
But officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are here, and they are talking to the man widely regarded as mixed martial arts’ heavyweight ‘GOAT’.
There is no suggestion that Fedor is in trouble with the FBI. But no one has a word to say about it. Not the officials overseeing the Bellator 198 event. They don’t know why. Not Fedor, nor his team. Not a word from the FBI, either.
Stum. No comment all round. But the theories, for what they are worth, are plentiful and plausible.
Here’s what happened: on Tuesday, Fedor arrived into Chicago with his team – a group of around twelve in the entourage, including his translator – after a training camp spent largely in Amsterdam, in preparation for his headline fight in Bellator’s heavyweight World Grand Prix tournament against Mr Mir, the former two-time UFC champion. Both men have been decorated champions, and are close to the end of their careers.
Three days ago, while the mixed martial arts legend was taking a walk outside in the vicinity with some members of his entourage, officials from the FBI turned up at the hotel, requested to see him, and knocked on his room. They waited for him. They spoke with him. They have, by some accounts, been in and out in the last few days.
It is worth recalling that Fedor has friends, who are fans, in very high places. Namely Presidents Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.
Putin has attended Fedor’s fights in the plush seats in the past, and the fighter has also served as a government official in the sports department in his native Russia. With Fedor being a person of note, and the current ongoings in Syria involving Russia and the USA, there could be security issues around his being here that are being monitored for his own safety.
But it could be other matters. The association with POTUS Trump goes back a decade ago to Fedor’s days fighting in the Affliction Entertainment fight league, which Trump had a “significant stake” in, and for whom, in 2008, the President elect became a front man for.
When Affliction Clothing, a manufacturer of MMA apparel based in California,looked to challenge the UFC’s dominance, Affliction Entertainment was formed as a separate company to hold pay-per-view events. They needed big name signings. Fedor was one. So was Trump.
Affliction executives threw chunk sized money in the direction of the Russian heavyweight. But who was appointed the COO of Affliction ? None other than Michael Cohen, currently under deep scrutiny and investigation by the FBI.
Two weeks ago, federal agents raided the New York offices and hotel apartment of Cohen. Described by Rolling Stone earlier this month as a decade-long “heavy, fixer and connector” for Trump, the investigation into Cohen from the US Attorney’s office at the behest of Robert Mueller, looking into allegations of fraud and alleged payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, may have seen Cohen’s associative net widened. It would certainly be intriguing if Fedor was being asked about that time.
Mr Cohen is facing a series of legal actions, and there is also a criminal investigation of Mr Cohen in New York, which prompted the recent FBI raid. Even this week it has been revealed that sixteen cell phones belonging to Cohen, found in the New York raid,and many of them old, have been confiscated and are being examined.
Which brings us back to Fedor. Who knows whether imprints of Fedor’s time fighting in Affliction have shown up in the FBI’s fine-combing. As stated, there is no suggestion that Fedor has done anything wrong, or is implicated in any wrongdoing, but as fight week build-ups go, this has to rank as one of the strangest of all for the fan favourite.
The final theory was that he got his passport wet, and the embossed page was hard to read. While it must have come as a surprise to get that ‘knock on the door’, it doesn’t seem to have bothered the fight sport legend. He just looks ready to do the business in a fighting cage on Saturday night