Fading Russian MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko beat Satoshi Ishii by TKO in the first round at the Dream New Year 2011 event. According to reports coming out of Japan, Fedor did more than finish Ishii in that one fight, he may have ended his MMA career. Fight Opinion has the details:

Japanese weekly publication Cyzo reports that doctors have told Ishii that he suffered a cerebral edema from the NYE beating. As a result, he was warned that any further blows to the head would cause some serious damage. As Cyzo put it, Ishii is facing a retirement crisis. There had been some discussion that he would face Ricardo Arona in late March in Brazil but that fight didn't look to be in the cards. After this latest development, the MMA prospects for Ishii look to be bleak as well.

If these reports prove true, Ishii, a 25-year-old with a 4-2-1 pro MMA record will go down in MMA history as one of the biggest busts of all time. A gold medal winner in Judo at the 2008 Olympics, he announced his intention to fight MMA in early 2009.

Ishii managed to bungle his initial round of interest by first announcing he would be signing with Dream, then nearly signing with the UFC, then settling on Sengoku, the weakest option. That delayed his MMA debut until New Year's Eve 2009 when he fought the legendary Hidehiko Yoshida (himself a former Olympic gold medalist in Judo) for Sengoku and managed to lose an ugly decision.

He then roamed the Pacific, fighting in Hawaii and New Zealand before returning to Japan to fight for Dream and K-1. He picked up a couple of meaningless wins then fought aging kickboxer Jerome Le Banner at the 2010 Dynamite! NYE show. That fight saw Ishii booed mercilessly by the Japanese crowd and sealed his fate as a popular attraction.

Now sadly it appears that Ishii's once-promising career may have been ended by Antonio Inoki's decision to book him against Fedor, still a very dangerous fighter if no longer the best in the world.

Zach Arnold tells the tale of Ishii's career in the full entry.

From Fight Opinion: