Look long enough at that broad, blank face and you’ll see it, the evidence of all the lives Fedor Emelianenko has lived.

No more baby-faced Fedor. He’s got scars now. He’s got those deep lines in his forehead, along the ridges of his cheekbones, souvenirs from nearly two decades as a professional fighter. And the worst of it came in just the last few years.

The nearly 20-year career of the Russian heavyweight changes depending on when and where you stop to look at it. He’s been Fedor the Great, Fedor the Unbeatable. He’s been Stoic Fedor, Enigmatic Fedor, even Contractually Frustrating Fedor.

Then he became Fedor Who Lost and Couldn’t Stop Losing. He was Fedor the Relic. Fedor the Cautionary Tale. Fedor the Punchline. Fedor Who Really Used to Be Something.

What a surprise then to find him here and now, riding a two-fight winning streak that’s carried him to the final of Bellator’s ambitious heavyweight grand prix. With a win over Ryan Bader on Saturday night in Inglewood, Calif., he could rewrite the whole last chapter of his own story, giving himself the chance to end with a title and triumph. Fedor the Comeback Kid.

There are two things standing in his way. One is Bader, the Bellator light heavyweight champ who went up a division in order to compete in this tournament and now stands as a 3-1 favorite to beat the old heavyweight opposing him in the finals.

If Emelianenko can’t stick a right hand in his ear during the first few minutes of this fight, it’s not hard to imagine Bader riding takedowns and top control all the way to a victory.

Bader’s a smart fighter these days. Especially up at heavyweight, he knows who he is and who he isn’t. Trading overhand murderballs with Emelianenko on the feet is one of the only ways he can realistically lose this fight, so don’t expect him to consent to that so willingly. Not when there are other options.

Still, the fabled Fedor punching power has proven to be one of the last things to fully leave him. His speed and agility have both faded. His chin has up and vanished. But Emelianenko can still make you see God with a fist upside your forehead, and he still fights like he has no regard for your ability to do anything about it.

He may be 42, and his best days may be in the rearview mirror, but when he’s in there bouncing on his toes with his hands light and ready at his waist you can almost convince yourself that it’s still 10 years ago and he’s still the man he always was. The way he fights, it sure seems like he believes it.

That brings us to the other thing standing in the way of a storybook ending, and that’s Emelianenko himself. In the lead up to this fight, he’s admitted to thinking “more and more” about the inevitability of retirement.

“It is not because I don’t want to fight,” Emelianenko told reporters through an interpreter this week. “It’s definitely because of the age, that speaks. And also injuries and all the wars that I had.”

And yet, if he ends up standing there on Saturday night with the Bellator heavyweight tournament belt around his waist, what with its list of vanquished foes carved into the metal plating, what are the odds that he’ll see it as a sign that he should quit while he’s ahead?

Losing may force some self-evaluation. Winning just means you must be doing something right and so you might as well keep going.

For Fedor, just making it this far in the tournament is a bit of a resurrection. It’s far more than most people expected of him when he followed a sham of a decision win over Fabio Maldonado in Russia with a knockout loss to Matt Mitrione in his Bellator debut.

Here he has a real chance to write the ending of his own story so that it comes out as one of many highlights rather than a sad, slow coda. All he has to do is be great one more time. Then he has to be great enough to know when to stop.

For more on Bellator 214, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.