Lee Jenkins: Mix Martial Arts [J. Mark English]

Lee Jenkins, New York Times -

On the morning of June 4, as the graduating class at Chelmsford High School in Massachusetts flocked to a football stadium for commencement, Chris Fox took a Greyhound bus to the Howard Johnson Hotel in Atlantic City.

The other seniors at Chelmsford High were about to receive their diplomas. Fox, 17, was about to get started on the next phase of his education: how to punch, kick and karate chop another man into bloody submission.

"I think I'm the only one missing my high school graduation to be here," Fox said. "But I knew it would be worth it."

He sat cross-legged in a ballroom, alongside about 140 other young men in workout clothes. Some had flown across the country. Others had driven all night. They were there not necessarily because they planned to be professional fighters, but because they wanted to learn under the best fighter in the world.

His name is Fedor Emelianenko, and in the sport of mixed martial arts, he is Mike Tyson, circa 1988. He draws more than 60,000 fans for his fights, makes more than $1 million a bout and rarely needs more than a couple of minutes to complete his work. He enters the ring looking out of shape and half-asleep. Then he begins stomping the head of the next challenger.

But as Emelianenko strode into the Howard Johnson, flanked by a United Nations interpreter and five ring girls clad in red satin, no one at the front desk recognized him. Mixed martial arts is still in the formative stages, a sport chronicled mainly on the Internet and fueled at the grass-roots level. Only when Emelianenko reached the ballroom, where he was to conduct a fighting seminar in his native Russian, did young men whisper and squeal.

"I never thought I could achieve so much this way," Emelianenko said through an interpreter. "But it was always my dream. It was my golden dream."

The dream, to parlay karate or wrestling or street-fighting skills into fame and riches, has spawned thousands of Americans in training. Teenagers practice mixed martial arts in local karate gyms for the same reason they play baseball for traveling teams. They hope someday to be good enough to make the major leagues.