MOSCOW  Fedor Emelianenko has been described as superhuman: as the No. 1 mixed martial arts fighter in the world, he has never been knocked out, and he often defeats opponents in a matter of minutes with a hale of thundering punches, never breaking his stony, stoic air.

Nicknamed the Last Emperor, Emelianenko has thousands of fans across Europe, North America and Japan. YouTube has more than 1,000 videos of him pummeling opponents from Orange County to Osaka in a sport that combines the spectacle of professional wresting with the violence of a barroom brawl. Each clip has tens of thousands of views, and many have gone viral, topping a million.

Emelianenko will fight Saturday night at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., in Affliction’s Day of Reckoning, a pay-per-view event sponsored by the Affliction clothing company and Donald Trump. Yet, in Emelianenko’s native Russia, a country that honors athletic heroes almost as highly as its greatest wartime generals, few will probably be watching.

“Emelianenko is a huge star, on par with Sharapova and Ovechkin,” said Pavel Lysenkov, a journalist with Sovietsky Sport, Russia’s premier sports newspaper, referring to the tennis star Maria Sharapova and the N.H.L. star Alexander Ovechkin. (Comparisons with Mike Tyson of the 1980s also abound.)