By Anton Gurevich, Lowkick.com

(Photo courtesy of Lowkick.com/A.Gurevich)

Next weekend, “The Last Emperor” Fedor Emelianenko (32-4) will look to prove he still knows how to win fights, squaring off against the fellow MMA veteran Jeff Monson in the main event of M-1 Global’s “Battle of Legends” in Moscow, Russia. The event will mark Emelianenko’s first bout in Russia since the BodogFights encounter with the now-retired Matt Lindland.

The “black stripe” of Fedor Emelianenko‘s career started back in June of 2009 with what was then a shocking defeat to Fabricio Werdum in just 60 seconds. The negative streak continued with a painful-to-watch TKO loss to the “Bigfoot”Antonio Silva, and the latest disappointment just a few months ago against Dan “Hendo” Henderson.

Against Jeff Monson, Fedor and his team hope for a different outcome.

The main part of Emelianenko’s training camp for Jeff Monson took place in Special Sports Gym in Amstelveen, Netherlands (20 minutes from Amsterdam). I had an exciting opportunity to interview Fedor Emelianenko in Netherlands (3 hours by train from my home, up north in Groningen), ahead of what could easily be the most important fight of his illustrious MMA career. Visibly reenergized Emelianenko shared about his plans for the fight with Jeff Monson, and what he’s been concentrating on in this training camp

“I don’t like to talk about other fighter’s weaknesses. That’s something we’ll be able to find out during the fight,” he said. ”Jeff Monson is physically strong, and has a very good ground game, with both wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He’s a game opponent.”

Check out the rest of this Lowkick.com exclusive interview with “The Last Emperor” HERE.