Fedor Emelianenko, arguably the greatest fighter in MMA history, turned 44 in September. He now fights for Bellator MMA, and is in the midst of a farewell tour, with two fights left on his contract. Bellator has held 15 events since restarting during the COVID-19 global pandemic in July with no audience, but “The Last Emperor” has fought in none of them. During a recent interview with Mike Bohn for MMA Junkie, CEO Scott Coker explained why.

I really wanted Fedor to fight his retirement fight not in front of just the officials and have the staff and be on a closed environment in a bubble, said Coker. I really want Fedor to finish his career in front of 30,000 people in Moscow, to be honest, Bellator MMA’s first fight in Russia. Do a fight in Moscow. For him, the prodigal son has returned. Fedor is the greatest fighter of all-time, and he’s now coming home to retire and put his gloves up and hang it up to retire.

I’m hoping that the vaccine will start fixing the situation and we can start bringing in crowds. But to me, I feel we’ve waited so long for Fedor to fight, hoping that the pandemic would thin out, and now that it’s getting close and I can see light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic to go away, I really want to wait and to do these fights in a proper stadium, especially the one we do in Moscow. I want to do something very big for him, because to me, it’s like he’s the king, and the king is returning from the battlefield.

Not only would he fight, but all the guys that we have, like [205 champ Vadim] Nemkov and like [Anatoly] Tokov and all those great fighters from Moscow that are fighting for Bellator, they will also fight on the card, and we’ll do maybe a ‘Russia vs. the world’ match there and you’ll see some fighters from Europe. We’ll have a great event.

h/t Dave Doyle