Thing people don’t understand is that in Eastern Europe most of the Western actions stars like Arnold, Stallone and VanDamme were way more popular than they ever were in the West. You could say it was just the right timing when Russia opened up to Western movies and VHS. There was nothing like that in the Soviet cinema at the time. Martial Arts besides Judo and Sambo were banned to practice. And those two weren’t hightly televised or anything.

Then all of a sudden you get his high spin kicking and splits doing action star doing things that most Russian youth at the time have never ever seen= big idol and inspiration for training for many including Fedor and CroCop.

Anyways, Fedor is only tolerating it cause hugging is more accepted over there and it’s VanDamme.

But yeah…weird doesn’t begin to describe VanDamme’s sad infatuation with Fedor and travelling to Japan to hug and kiss….