Fight Camp 360: Inside the camps of Emelianenko, Rogers

On Tuesday night Showtime will debut Fight Camp 360: Fedor vs. Rogers, a half-hour documentary to promote Saturday night's fight between FedorEmelianenko and Brett Rogers on CBS. I got an advance look at the documentary on Monday, and it's at its best when it shows the two fighters' trainers exuding confidence that their guy can win.

Fight Camp 360 shows Rogers' trainer, Mike Reilly, watching Fedor's fight with Andrei Arlovski on YouTube, and telling Rogers that he needs to control the tempo of the fight the same way Arlovski did at the start of his fight with Fedor.

"Arlovski's actually bullying him around," Reilly says. "That's what I need you to do in the clinch, too. Don't be so worried about the takedown that you don't bully him around."

Although Fedor doesn't show much interest in watching tape of Rogers' fights, his coaches do -- and they're dismissive of Rogers' skills in his own fight with Arlovski.

"He misses the first, second, third, fourth, fifth," one of Fedor's coaches chuckles while watching Rogers swing wildly at Arlovski. "He got him on the sixth one. Hands down, his head sticking out, it's hard not to get him."

Fedor's coaches say the game plan is simple and easy: "Fedor just has to be active."

But Fedor himself doesn't show that cockiness. Fight Camp 360 portrays him as a quiet, simple, spiritual man, who has no desire to go anywhere other than the church where he visits his spiritual advisor, Father Andrey, and the banya in his hometown of Stary Oskol, Russia.

"My family, parents and friends are here," Fedor says. "I like my small town. I'm happy here."

The scenes showing Rogers in his own hometown of Minneapolis are less interesting, because Rogers himself doesn't have a whole lot to say. But we do get to hear Rogers' grandma tell him she's not sure if she'll watch the Fedor fight because "I just can't stand to see you get hit." And we get to hear Rogers' wife confess that before Brett finally started making good money as a fighter this year, her attitude toward his aspiration as a professional athlete was, "This is just a dream, this is not going to come true."

That the best quotes in Fight Camp 360 come from trainers, grandmothers and wives isn't surprising, because both Fedor and Rogers are quiet, introspective people. Those qualities don't lend themselves to hyping a fight, but Fight Camp 360 gives MMA fans something better than hype: It gives them insight.