Russia

(Props: MMA Fanhouse)

As a footnote to his essay about leaving Red Devil and being totally cleared to fight in America, you may recall Aleks Emelianenko making passing mention of a bout against Ibragim Magomedov.  Well, it happened this weekend in Russia, and as you see it probably won’t be on anyone’s Fight of the Year list.

Emelianenko gets rocked by a good right hand at the end of an exchange and is clearly wobbled, but he’s savvy enough to clinch and hold on until he can get his mind unscrambled.  By that time, however, the referee has noticed that Magomedov is cut, and the fight gets stopped before it really had a chance to get going and Aleks is awarded the TKO victory.

A disappointing outcome?  Yeah, but you can’t blame them.  I wouldn’t want to be in there with Aleks if I had an open wound on my face either.  Come on.  We were all thinking it.

Related: Barnett Confronts Aleks, Re: Shit-Talking, Take Two
Sort of Related: Aleks Ponders UFC Offer, New Tattoo

(A joy so pure, so simple, it can only come from two ice cream cones.)

Noted author and smug smartass Matthew Polly traveled to Russia to witness firsthand Fedor Emelianenko’s loss at the Sambo World Championships in St. Petersburg in November.  He tells the tale in an article for Slate.com that contains several interesting insights about Russia and none of the cloying, faux-intellectual bullshit that usually finds its way into any Slate article (“Was Kevin Costner’s ‘Waterworld’ an Ahead-of-Its-Time Eco-Parable?” asks one such article.  No, asshole.  No it wasn’t).   

While the whole thing is interesting, even if you don’t care about Russian history or why St. Petersburg is a bizarrely beautiful and yet poorly-designed city, the last page is where we get serious about the mystery of Fedor.  What we end up learning, though, both in the Slate article and the full post-Sambo loss interview on Fightlinker, is that Fedor is either too nice to be interesting or else an impenetrable enigma.  And maybe we just choose to believe the latter because it's more fun.

('It would be pleasure to hurt hand on your face very much.')

Fedor Emelianenko broke his silence about his Combat Sambo loss this past weekend, telling Dave Meltzer that it's no biggie. Sambo's just something he does for shits and giggles. MMA is what he does for money:

"My Bulgarian opponent wasn’t a surprise,” said Emelianenko through an interpreter. “I always understand there could be the possibility of losing a bout. My opponent was European champion in combat sambo. But for me, sambo is a hobby. I enjoy participating in the sport, but it’s a different sport. It’s a sport scored based on throws and being taken to the ground. That’s happened to me in MMA with [Kazuyuki] Fujita and [Antonio Rodrigo] Nogueira. It’s not my occupation or my work, which is MMA. I think the result would be different under MMA rules."

It's not quite 'Oh, Snap!' worthy, but in Fedor terms that's about as close to shit-talking as he usually likes to get. He makes a valid point, though. Sambo isn't a real fight, and anyway he lost on points. Word has it that he flew in from Thailand not long before the match, and a source who spoke to Fedor at the actual event tells Cage Potato that the Russian doesn't really seem too excited about Sambo these days, and may be doing it more out of patriotic obligation than anything else.

In other words, don't get your hopes up, Andrei Arlovski. Fedor hasn't fallen off just yet.

("Well, it was nice knowing you." Photo courtesy of M-1 MixFight; props to BloodyElbow for the heads-up.)

M-1 is holding an M-1 Challenge event today in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Team Russia Red Devil taking on Team Korea, and Team Russia Legion facing Team Holland; the full lineup is here. Headlining the team competition will be two "superfights" that reflect the card's nation vs. nation theme. The Legion/Holland main event will be 1-1 rookie Alexander Timanov vs. Dutch bad-boy Gilbert Yvel, while the Red Devil/Korea feature will be none other than Alexander Emelianenko vs. Spirit MC/DEEP/M-1 vet Sang Soo Lee (10-4). Soo has won four of his five fights this year, including a submission victory over Emelianenko's Red Devil clubmate Roman Zentsov. The Korean fighter may be a step up in competition from Aleks's last opponent, but we still think The Grim Reaper should be able to take this one relatively easily. More photos from yesterday's weigh-ins are after the jump, courtesy of M1MixFight.com.

Some classic MMA goodness from the '90s: First off is Andrei Arlovski's unsuccessful pro MMA debut against Viacheslav Datsik (above), which went down in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the M-1 MFC World Championship on 4/9/1999; props to MMA Fight Girls for digging up the video. Fight starts at the 2:11 mark, and the Pitbull gets put to sleep about six minutes later. Arlovski would return to the cage a year later at the M-1 MFC European Championship, where he smoked Michael Tielrooy and Roman Zentsoz in a four-man bracket and caught the attention of the UFC.

Below is an absolutely insane video of Absolute Fighting Championship 1, a one-day, 32-man vale tudo tournament — yes, 32-man tournament — that took place in Moscow on 9/25/1995. Enormous future PRIDE fighter Ricardo "The Mutant" Morais made his MMA debut that day, stopping four opponents via strikes (all in less than two minutes apiece), before choking out Mikhail Illoukhine in the final. I guarantee it'll be the most hardcore thing you see all week.