A LONG, BIZARRE INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER EMELIANENKO

Heavyweight Alexander Emelianenko is the younger brother of MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko. Ten years into his professional MMA career, Alexander is still one of the most talented MMA fighters out there, but recently his name has been spotted more often in tabloids than on sports pages. Last year he was charged with hooliganism after a drunken brawl on a plane, and his recent fight with a 63-year-old pensioner at a bar in Moscow further added to his reputation as the black sheep of the Emelianenko family.

In the ring, meanwhile, promoters have accused Emelianenko of failing to get ready for his recent fights. Last week he lost an exhibition fight in the first round to MMA newcomer Dmitry “Wicked Machine” Sosnowski. Many Russian commentators have already called this defeat the end of Emelianenko’s career as a fighter, noting the amount of fat on his body and the lack of energy this onetime great prospect brought to the fight.

I met Emelianenko at a railway station’s café an hour before his train to St. Petersburg was leaving. He was on his way to fight Sosnowski. As I approached the table Emelianenko was getting ready to enjoy his first round of sushi. As soon as I was introduced by my contact, Emelianenko told me, “Don’t worry. I can be like Julius Caesar: listen, think, eat, and speak at the same time. Go on, ask me your questions.”

Fightland: When was your last fight?
Alexander Emelianenko: I don't even remember. There have been a couple of tournaments that didn't work out because the organizers didn't have money to pay me.

How important is the fight with Sosnowski for you?
Any fight is important for me. I will have a very good Ukrainian fighter to face. He is strong, patient, and comes to Russia not to go under me but to beat me.

Who do you think will win?
Of course I will. What a ridiculous question!

(Ed. note: At this point I noticed that the young lady sitting on the opposite end of the table was taking a picture of me and Emelianenko on her phone. Then I heard Emelianenko's promoter, Oleg, talking to someone on his phone, saying, "Can you check this guy, he is weird, looks like a cop to me. What about his plate numbers? They are stolen, right? Can you call and get a police detachment to come and check him." Whether any of this had to do with me will most likly remain an open question.)

What is the latest on the criminal case against you related to the fight in the bar?
They closed the case. Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev blundered out that I would be wanted if I don’t turn in for questioning. But I was at the training camp at that time and told the investigators through my lawyer that I would be late. And now the case is closed. The victim has realized his guilt and that it was him who started first.

(Ed. note: The victim has asked the court to pardon Emelianenko, but, according to Russian media, the case hadn’t been closed yet.)

So you are not a troublemaker? What about the incidents on the plane and elsewhere?
This is all media’s slander. There should be a good guy and bad guy in the family. The media shows me as a bad one and Fedor as a good one. You just don’t know everything.

For example?
I won’t tell you. (laughs)

I have read in Russian media that you took part in lots of street fights when you were growing up as a kid in your hometown of Stary Oskol. Is it so?
This is all rubbish. Gossip. I wasn’t a brawler as a kid.

Lets talk about Fedor. When was the last time you saw him?
He is a busy man. One day he is in Japan, the other somewhere else. Same with me. Life is taking us in different directions.

Will he ever come back to MMA?
No, never. His time is long gone. Let him deal with the Union (Russian MMA Union). Though, of course, he left on a rather negative note. The organizers just gave him two invalids to beat, Jeff Monson and Pedro Rizzo, so he could, at least, leave with a win. But I am happy and proud of Fedor. Everything that has been achieved by Russia in fighting so far is because of Fedor and no one else

Is Fedor still training?
He has stopped. He comes for fitness once in a while. That is it.

Are you planning on taking revenge for your brother with Fabricio Werdum or Antonio Silva?
Those fighters are on contracts with other organizations. Let him take the revenge on his own.

But you just said that he was not going to return.
Well, there are many other ways to start a fight. (laughs)

Did you ever fight Fedor?
Not really, we decided that we would never fight each other on the ring. We have the best possible relations brothers could have. I have always kind of given him the victory when we were supposed to face each other in the finals of sambo tournaments. Though the organizers would always beg us to fight because there were people waiting for that fight to happen, but I have always said I would not fight him. But they have always asked to do, at least, something so we were going out and he was doing a submission lock for a few seconds. We haven’t been offered any money or anything, but, of course, we have fought at training camps and we have never had any mercy for each other during the training.

Would you fight under Fedor's union?
No, because it is still mostly amateur fighting with up to six fights in a day for an opportunity to win a medal or a diploma. I get paid for taking part in just one professional fight. That is why I consider amateur fighting unfair because fighters kill and injure themselves; they fight even harder than professionals do but get nothing in return. Fedor should structure the system, so he is doing that by sometimes making mistakes but you learn by making mistakes.

What do you think about Fedor's friendship with Vladimir Putin?
Putin likes the sport and he supports it very well. I am happy for Fedor. What is bad about it? Wouldn't you like to be friends with Putin?

Putin is a great man. It is only with his help and support that MMA has been registered as the official sport. He helps Fedor a lot, comes to fights, supports fighters. He doesn't have enough time for many athletes but he has for fighters. He helps to build new sports venues for the Olympic games in Sochi. No one wins the opportunity to host Winter Olympic Games by accident. Lots of money is invested into building sports venues in Russia and it's great.

You are fighting Jeff Monson in a rematch on May 25. How will you be getting ready for the fight after losing to him in 2012?
Monson has finally agreed for a rematch. We have signed a deal. The head of [MMA promoter] M-1 Global, [Vadim] Finkelstein, didn’t want to let him go. Monson terminated the contract with M-1 and signed a new deal with a different promoter. I will have several fights in Russia before my fight with Monson so I will have enough time to get ready.

I didn't train for that first fight with Monson. I didn't spend a single day in a gym because I was injured. I wanted to go to recover and told Finkelstein and Fedor that I wouldn't fight. I just wasn't ready. But the two started to complain that the fight had already been officially announced and that they would be shut down for canceling the fight.

“Please go out and save the fight,” they begged me.

So I had to go out to save the Jewish business.

Is Monson a serious fighter?
He is old. He has been promoted with a huge PR campaign. He came to Russia to earn cash because he wasn't paid a single penny in the U.S. There was a similar fighter when Fedor and myself fought in Pride; M-1 was promoting Bob Schrijber. He had a record of 15 losses and 15 wins. Those fighters are all coming out with hot chicks, yell something out. It is cool but they don’t know how to fight. They are not fighters. When Fedor and myself trained in Holland, we’ve kicked their ass at a gym just like that. It is just for the purpose of the show and nothing else.

(At this point, Emelianenko was served another round of sushi, and he decided to educate me on the right way to eat it.)

You eat sushi with your hands and rolls with the sticks, you dump into the sauce with the fish, not rice. This is how Japanese do, to disinfect and not to block the taste of the fish. In Russia we have rice impregnated with sauce and you taste just the sauce.

What's the deal with your other brother, Ivan?
Ivan is good-for-nothing. He doesn’t want to compete in MMA. He is 25 now and the doors of MMA are closed for him. He doesn’t know how to fight, to punch, to wrestle. He is sitting and eating at our mother’s place or going to St. Petersburg to visit his friends who live at a dormitory or working as a security guard at a store or elsewhere. There is too much of a responsibility and it is terrifying to enter any arena under the name of Emelianenko. Neither Fedor nor myself had easy fights. Same responsibility is with Ivan, especially when he has two brothers who can beat anyone. That is why he got scared. It is very scary when you enter the ring. Some go out and don’t know which God they should pray to so not to faint and be able to get to the ring and fight either Fedor or myself. We had the record of 104.000 people in Japan sitting and watching our fights in Pride

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/a-long-bizarre-interview-with-alexander-emelianenko---part-1

Fightland: Everyone, even your brother Fedor, say that you had more potential than he did. Has Fedor's success put pressure on you?
Alexander Emelianenko: No, I wrestle him down easily with my arms. Everyone stands out in his own way. I am also not remaining in the shadow. He was just lucky here and there. I can’t say anything bad about my brother because Fedor helped me a lot; he brought me into MMA. When I was a small kid, Fedor carried me on his back through the whole town of Stary Oskol, where we lived, from the kindergarten back home and then to the gym. At first, I just watched from the bench at the gym then they gave me a small kimono and I have started to wrestle. I am very thankful to him.

What happened to your contract with [MMA promoters] M-1 Global? I started to work for the pocket of [Vadim] Finkelstein. When I first met him, he was driving a cheap BMW and telling me so many beautiful stories. But when he started working with me and Fedor, he purchased a hectare of land, a Bentley, and lots of other cars. Then I just understood that I could fight without his help and earn more money because I know MMA from inside out. I don't work with Finkelstein because he is Finkelstein.

You said in one of your interviews a year or two ago that you were going to fight for 10 more years. Have you changed your mind?
Of course not. What else can I do? I get different offers to take part in this or that business, but as long as I have enough energy, I will carry on fighting. I can't say that I have done enough in MMA. I will keep on fighting until everyone in Russia starts doing sports. By the way, heavyweight fighters start feeling the strength at the age of 30 and I had lots of interesting fights but I can’t say I had my last one.

I am trying to develop the sport. Trying to make the youth go to the gym. Trying to show them what you can do instead of watching shit on TV. I am building a gym in St. Petersburg where everyone will be able to train for free. We should train Russian fighters and make them the best.

But just before you went to the monastery you said you were going to finish your career?
That was a joke. Many people don't get jokes. Anyways, I was joking for Russian fighters but everyone started to cry that fights would be dead without Alexander: “MMA without Alexander is not MMA.”

What was this monastery story all about?
It was a pilgrimage. I am a religious man. I believe in God and I have shown everyone, every Christian that you should go to church at least once a week. I was there for three months. I visited different monasteries, saw relics. I learned much more about religion than I have known before. And, of course, I am planning on going back because I am asked to come back every day. Half of my phone contacts are monks, priests. It wasn’t a PR action like those swines, journalists, reported. They write one thing and then the following day I have to deny everything.



What do you think about Fedor's showing his religiosity during his fights?
I have no idea. You should ask him. He was the one coming out, kissing the cross, taking it off, and giving it to his coach. But he went to the monastery that I went to only once.

Is there a reason why you don’t want to go to the U.S. and fight in UFC?
I am not interested in fighting in the U.S. Randy Couture was a very interesting fighter. He was great but he has been crushed when he wanted to leave UFC and fight Fedor just when he was at the peak of his popularity. Dana White sued him in the U.S. and won. Couture had to return to UFC and was banned from fighting elsewhere. His popularity dropped then he lost a couple of fights and he dropped in price. Eventually, he left the sport.

What do you think about women’s MMA?
Oh! I don’t respect it at all! There are women and men’s type of sport. Would you fancy dating a girl with broken ears or nose? There are feminine types of sport like rhythmic gymnastics or figure skating that develop and make women look beautiful. Imagine you have a wife who does weightlifting. She is going to pick you up and carry away.

There are the Emelianenko brothers and just across the border in Ukraine there are the Klitschko brothers. What do you think about them?
Klitschko brothers have astonished me in a bad way. The younger one lives with a small boy in Germany and I wonder how much money has the elder one received from the Rothschild family. No less than $100 million so he could compete with the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and try to become the president himself. They have already taken everything in the heavyweight category. They should carry on doing what they know and not trade themselves as some dishonorable girls do.

What do your parents think about your fighting?
At first our mother didn’t watch the fights. But when she did, she would always curse at Fedor: “Why have you kicked Alexander so badly?” She was crying all the time but I always told her that everything was fine. We are old enough to choose what we want to do. We asked our mother not to interfere and carried on fighting. Our mother submitted to our wish later on but now she is telling me, after every fight, to quit, and I am asking her, “What am I going to do then? Do nothing?”

Would you be able to do something else?
No. When the kids at the school I went to were asked who you wanted to be when you grow up, everyone was saying either an astronaut or a policeman. And only I said I wanted to be a fighter.

There are lots of rumors about your tattoos. Do they have criminal connotations? You have stars that areusually the sign of being a thief with the Russian mafia.
Tattoos is my hobby. I don't have stars … I have them only on my knees but, you know, in summer when Iwear shorts it is like riding a bicycle when you have the light falling down so you can be spotted from far. My neighbor, a real hooligan, asked me if I wanted to get a tattoo and I said, “Why not?!” Now I have tattoos all over my body. That is his job. I usually choose tattoos that I like and I can do it anywhere I am. The recent one was done by the best tattoo master in Moscow. It is called the “Prayer of Jesus.”



Your once and future opponent Jeff Monson also has lots of tattoos.
He has incomprehensible tattoos.

What is life like in Stary Oskol?
Visit it yourself and ask my mother. I didn't have any childhood there. My friends were drinking beers with girls, smoking, while I was passing them by with my wet kimono. They were saying to me, "Alex, what do you need this for? Come and party with us." And I have been looking at them and thinking, "Bastards." Then you come to the gym, put on the wet kimono--it stinks, you feel sick from the gym. But now those friends are either jealous, doing drugs, or dead. Everyone achieves what they want.

Have you achieved what you wanted?
No, I am only starting. If Fedor and myself leave the sport, there will be no one to go out and fight. MMA will die and Finkelstein will have to go back to Israel.

What Russian fighters will dominate MMA in the near future?
Me.

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/alexander-emelianenko-doesnt-like-womens-mma-and-isnt-in-the-russian-mafia---part-2

Could be time to hang em up for Aleks.

Well answers where the hell Ivan is LOL

A fucking security guard ....

Guess I'd be intimidated to follow the emelianenkos footsteps huge amount of pressure.

Aleks is so done its not funny.

Also interesting take on fedors last 2 fights afraid I'd have to agree with aleks.

Monson and rizzo werent stellar last opponents.

fka wrote:Well answers where the hell Ivan is LOL

A fucking security guard ....

Guess I'd be intimidated to follow the emelianenkos footsteps huge amount of pressure.

Aleks is so done its not funny.

Also interesting take on fedors last 2 fights afraid I'd have to agree with aleks.

Monson and rizzo werent stellar last opponents.

I agree

Deport Fecalstain to Israel

AudaxSmoke wrote:FIGHTLAND IS SPONSORED BY ZUFFA, DO NOT READ OR SUPPORT THEIR GARBAGE

did you read the interview? it was pretty interesting.

loyalty13 wrote:

AudaxSmoke wrote:FIGHTLAND IS SPONSORED BY ZUFFA, DO NOT READ OR SUPPORT THEIR GARBAGE

did  you read the interview? it was pretty interesting.

This is pretty interesting too

Vice's Artsy MMA Site Is Pretty Much A UFC Front



Last December, Vice launched Fightland, a mildly artsy fight game site. So far, it's more or less lived up to the expectations you'd have for a mildly artsy fight game site run by Vice.

You get some cringeworthy nonsense, because of course you do, but you also get bantamweight Julie Kedzie telling a great story about hanging out with Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi, or interviews with Steve Albini and Big Boi where they talk about the walkout music they'd use if they were pro fighters. It's fun.

For a site with an apparently modest audience, though, it's always seemed pretty glossy—15 minute documentaries about Cuban fighters aren't cheap—and suspiciously wired into the UFC. So when this article on the corrupt fight press mentioned in an aside that the UFC actually funds Fightland, it made perfect sense. You thought Vice was investing in coverage of a rising sport just for the hell of it, or that the UFC was granting serious access to Vice just to reach past the neckless tattoo guy demographic? Come on.

There's no mention of Fightland being a 50-50 partnership between the UFC and Vice anywhere on the site itself, at least where I can find it (there is one in an obscure recess of the Vice website), and so one might describe the venture as a deceptive, embarrassing attempt to deliberately pass off what is essentially advertorial product as independent journalism. According to Vice, though, that would be totally wrong, because buried in the depths of Variety's website there's a post from May 2012 that announces a joint UFC/Vice venture, and because they issued a couple of press releases mentioning the relationship, and because they "openly talk about it on a regular basis." Vice didn't really respond when I asked what the best way to describe Fightland would be—sponsored content? a UFC Astroturf website?—so we'll just say that it's totally aboveboard and in no way sketchy as fuck, because who doesn't go rummaging through the Variety archives to see whether what they're reading is part of some #branding campaign-slash-exercise in fake countercultural sportswriting.

Which, fine; really, one has to admire the perverse brilliance of an arrangement whereby a sports promotion can partner with a media enterprise to cover it, set up that coverage so that readers are unaware of the relationship, and then plausibly say that the whole thing is completely transparent when asked about it. Maybe this is the future of sportswriting. I don't know.

I do know that there's a certain inexorable logic working here. The UFC, after all, routinely bars writers from outlets like ESPN and Deadspin from covering them for doing things like reporting stories the UFC doesn't want reported, or being too negative. The natural corollary to that is partnering with media outlets to ensure that they'll get just the kind of coverage they like.

If the UFC and Fightland's editor were willing to talk about it (they aren't), I'm certain they'd assure me that nothing of the sort is going on here, that the UFC's interest is simply in underwriting a different kind of coverage of fighting than you can find elsewhere, etc. etc.

The problem with this is that we got our hands on some emails a Vice higher up sent around last year, and he certainly seemed to think differently.

One of these emails had to do with an article in draft, in which a writer had written a mildly derogatory, perfectly accurate line about UFC figurehead Dana White. "I agree with him," the higher up wrote, "buuuuut.... that last paragraph is pretty much saying Dana White doesnt know what he's doing. I hate to always point this out but...i dont."

(Originally, the line read, "Dana White doesn’t understand, and is even mildly contemptuous of, the personality and mentality of the average fighter." Somehow, it ended up as, "Dana White isn't entirely attuned to the mentality of average fighters.")

In another email, about a draft of an article about how cage fighting isn't really especially safe, the same higher up decided to remind everyone of the fundamental nature of the site. "With Fightland being a partnership with UFC," he wrote, "I get concerned about certain things we say. I know the UFC want mma to be as accpeted as the NFL. It is proven that MMA is safer than footbal." The piece ran, but one suspects the points about just who pays the bills and just what the purpose of the venture is were made.

It's just a crummy commercial.

http://deadspin.com/vices-artsy-mma-site-is-pretty-much-a-ufc-front-1227178632

Aleks is a bit weird from all the drinking but I also think his interviews are not translated right.

When it comes to fightland they never write good things about euro/asian mma, it´s mostly articles about MMA in the Slums of Japan and homeless russian fighters.

I used to think Fightland was great until I heard they had ZUFFA funding. I don't know if that means they have any creative control over the content but I'd imagine they wouldn't be too happy if Fightland put out a piece criticizing them.

ZUFFA tries to control all the MMA media and I don't see how you can claim to be a real MMA news outlet and accept money from them. It's a massive conflict of interest and raises up the question about the integrity of the journalism.

All the big stories to make are about how ZUFFA is a monopoly, about the skewed ratio that is the revenue they make and how much the fighters get back, and steroids/TRT.

That was a interesting interview though. Nice to hear from Aleks.

adam wrote:I used to think Fightland was great until I heard they had ZUFFA funding. I don't know if that means they have any creative control over the content but I'd imagine they wouldn't be too happy if Fightland put out a piece criticizing them.

ZUFFA tries to control all the MMA media and I don't see how you can claim to be a real MMA news outlet and accept money from them. It's a massive conflict of interest and raises up the question about the integrity of the journalism.

All the big stories to make are about how ZUFFA is a monopoly, about the skewed ratio that is the revenue they make and how much the fighters get back, and steroids/TRT.

That was a interesting interview though. Nice to hear from Aleks.

If I was a journalist I would be all over a scoop about the Fertittas and Zuffa but it seems like no one even knows what´s going on. No wonder considering how many times they deleted our Fertittas mafia thread.

Aleks is a master troll but the journalists don´t understand his humour. I don´t take his interviews seriously.

KSW wrote:Aleks is a master troll but the journalists don´t understand his humour. I don´t take his interviews seriously.

Agreed, they probably sent some skinny hipster tool to do the interview that Aleks couldn't take completely serious.

Zuffaland just attempting to use this piece as another way to AGAIN try and make other cultures look inferior.

Lol! I dont support fight land but I laugh on this one! Aleks is crazy lol