The LA Times has a big article about Fedor Emelianenko fighting in SoCal. He’ll be headlining the Affliction: Banned event at the Honda Center in Anaheim (better known as “The Pond” to hockey fans) on July 19th. Nothing really revelatory here other than the Times making it sound like a big deal:

In a boon for Southern California mixed martial arts fans, Russia’s Fedor Emelianenko, the man ranked by some of the sport’s devotees as the top fighter in the world, is coming to Anaheim for a July 19 fight against former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia.

“Fedor’s the Mike Tyson of this sport; we know all of America’s anxious to see him,” said Roy Englebrecht, the Orange County-based boxing-MMA promoter who helped orchestrate the pay-per-view fight at Anaheim’s Honda Center.

Emelianenko, 31, is the former heavyweight champion of Japan’s PRIDE Fighting Championships. He has defeated current UFC heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira twice and was PRIDE’s heavyweight champion from 2003 until UFC bought the organization, and later dissolved it.

He fought in his final PRIDE event Dec. 31, 2006, and has fought in the U.S. only once, beating Mark Coleman by a second-round armbar submission in October 2006.

When UFC executives failed to sign Emelianenko (27-1) to a multi-fight contract, Emelianenko signed with Russia’s M-1 organization, and it sponsored his first-round submission of Hong-Man Choi on Dec. 31 in Japan.

Russia’s Fedor Emelianenko to fight in Anaheim @ LA Times