“Sometimes the guys from Dagestan lose in the fight.” Fighter Fiziev prepares to fight a very tough fighter

At one point, Mateusz Gamrot deserved the honorary title of “Polish Khabib” with a 17-0 record in his first 17 fights. At the beginning of his career, even Marif Piraev and several popular fighters in Poland suffered from Gamrot. In the UFC, Gamrot has five wins and two losses, but both losses came in very close fights. No one can confidently beat the 32-year-old Pole, and a relaxed Rafael Fiziev will attempt to do so this weekend.

Rafael has almost the same numbers in the promotion (6-2), but his career before the UFC was not so bright: Rafael entered the best promotion in the world with numbers of 6-0, and half of his opponents have no longer won. than losses. Along with MMA, Fiziev took part in Thai boxing competitions and became the hero of a viral video dodging kicks in the style of Neo from the film “The Matrix”. Rafael repeated the same trick in the UFC during a fight with Mark Diakiezi. His six-fight winning streak was snapped in March when Rafael faced Justin Gaethje and lost for the first time in three years.

— After winning silver at the Olympic Games, Alexander Kareline’s children asked: Dad, all medals are yellow, but why is this one white? What did the children ask you after the argument with Gaethje?

“They are still small and didn’t ask for anything.” My oldest son is only six years old, I came home and he just asked me, “What’s wrong with daddy’s face?” Dad, did you fight? Did you fight like that? And he looks at his mother and still doesn’t understand anything.

— Do they watch the shows?

“They watch at home, but they panic and go back and forth.” But now, the older one more or less searches, understands, speaks. At least he understands that I’m going to fight, for my job like this.

—Could you have won against Gaethje that night?

– Maybe I could, yes. I did everything I could to lose to him that way. I made purely tactical errors. In many moments you just have to hold your horses a little, but I worked with all my energy. I was just confident I could finish it at this pace.

— When did you feel very tired?

“Probably a minute into the third round, or maybe a minute and a half later, I was done.” I already realized that I had no strength.

— Khabib said Gaethje’s hit is similar to hitting a truck, what would you compare it to?

“I wouldn’t say he hits hard, it seemed to me that dos Anjos hit me harder. But he beats with his fists in an incomprehensible way, as if using his front knuckles with his fingers. Like an open palm, but clenched into a fist. And such damage from this – it barely hurts, it cuts off immediately. It hit me and I immediately had a strange feeling. The blow feels like a regular blow, but my forehead feels like it’s stinging. I wonder if he just pricked and cut his forehead.

— Mateusz Gamrot is a very strong wrestler. Who was the strongest fighter of your sparring partners?

— There were a lot of guys like that at the Kill Cliff gym (the gym of Dutch kickboxer Henry Hooft in Florida. — Note “”), there was a good Bellator fighter, Sidney Outlaw (helped Dustin Poirier get himself prepare for the fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov. — Rating “”). There were good wrestlers in Phuket.

— What do you think Islam Makhachev would say if you asked him to come to his training camp?

— I haven’t thought about it, but I think the answer would be “no”, after all, I’m next to him in the rankings. Although…I don’t even know what the answer would be. I think we are in competition: he is the champion, and I am number six. It might even be unethical for me to ask this question.

— The most popular advice to MMA fighters is to go to Dagestan. Have you considered this possibility?

— Once I thought about going to Dagestan and organizing training camps there. But sometimes the guys from Dagestan lose in the fight. And it happens. Either way, there’s a strong school there, and I would have won something somewhere. But I always thought that if I went to Dagestan, there would be a risk of getting hurt. The guys there are all hot, some will want to show off in sparring and fighting, even at the Tiger in Phuket when the guys from Dagestan come, you pair up, you seem to be working carefully, but they are hot , they are starting to do crazy things there. For example, before I flew to Florida, a guy hit me four times in the head and nose.

— The biggest news on Phuket since the beginning of September is the detention of the Askhabov brothers. Did this news really surprise you?

“I know them very well and this news surprised me a lot.” I have a warm relationship with them. From the start, I didn’t believe it. At first I thought they had succumbed to someone’s influence. And that these people did something, but the boys just remained extreme. And now it turns out that the guys, in principle, did nothing. The guy who was robbed simply told Hassan and Hussein that they had tipped. Looks like it was just his words that tipped them. And they were “criticized”. The guys are very nice, but anyone can succumb to influence. I don’t believe they could commit such an act.

— Last time, not everyone understood the presence of manager Sayat Abdrakhmanov in your corner as head coach. Someone thought he didn’t have the skills to back up the fighter. Can you respond to these people?

— Sayat is my close person, my friend. Having a loved one next to you in a corner is always helpful. Furthermore, Sayat was not my trainer in this fight; he doesn’t train me. But he understands what my trainers’ plan was, and in battle he can suggest that plan to me. I prepared the plan for the fight with Gaethje myself, so there is absolutely no need to go after Sayat here. He just supported me as a close person.

— Who will be in your corner, and can anyone be called your head coach now?

— Now I have completed my training with Henry Hooft in Florida, and Henry himself and Nick Lenz will be my seconds.

Live broadcasts of mixed martial arts tournaments can be seen on and Match! Fighter”, as well as on the sites matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru.