“I have about the same salary now.” Interview with Alexey Oleynik ahead of first official post-UFC fight

Alexey Oleynik’s career began in November 1996. Khabib’s brothers Umar and Usman were not yet born, Arman Tsarukyan was one month old, and Shara Bullet and Khamzat Chimaev were two years old. Oleinik took a very long time to get to the UFC, he arrived there in 2014 and had a very successful career. Returning to Russia, the veteran immediately plunged into a confusing reality. In the first fight, Oleinik lost by knockout to Oli Thompson, but unexpectedly the fight was not included in the official statistics. And here you need to understand that this is not the power of the authority of the fighter himself. This was how it was initially planned: the fights took place according to the rules of the federation created by Vladimir Khryunov. It’s just that no one knew that such a unique decision of the organizers would unexpectedly help Alexei himself. And his last MMA fight officially took place on October 1, 2022 during the UFC tournament.

On December 15 in Yekaterinburg, Oleynik will face Fernando Rodriguez (13-8 in MMA) at RCC 17, and it is from this fight that we can count the fights of the 45-year-old athlete outside the UFC.

— Were you surprised that your previous fight with Oli Thompson was not formally considered a professional fight, and it turns out that you only officially participated in MMA for the first time after leaving the UFC?

– I wasn’t surprised. We agreed on this point with the television channel which hosted the tournament. I was asked to speak, and I did. On this date I was offered many options including Oli Thompson. I said, “Okay, we’ll fight him.” » That’s right, they told me later that our rules are: rounds will last three minutes, and everything in between. It didn’t matter to me whether or not this fight made it into the professional statistics.

– You take Thompson to the ground, and they pick you up immediately. Didn’t that surprise you?

— This didn’t surprise me during the battle, but it’s basically an unpleasant feature of the rules. I realized that this feature was not made for my fight, but for Sasha Emelianenko’s fight, so as not to allow me to work too much on the ground. And for some reason, the referee decided to apply the same rules to my fight. Although Vladimir Khryunov repeatedly told me and repeated that we will have the same rules as in MMA, and moreover, while active actions are taking place, no one will lift him from the ground or separate him from the clinch .

— Is a rematch with Oli Thompson important to you?

– There is no principle. It’s my fault that everything happened like this, the mistake was mine. I can’t say I didn’t do enough or anything like that. I have no hard feelings against him, he did everything he could. He did everything correctly, did not break the rules. So I have no personal hostility, other than sporting ambition. He had a chance and he took it, well done.

– But would you like to fight with him again and beat him, or do you just want to continue playing?

“I just want to fight.” I have neither the time nor the desire to restore lost or perhaps not even lost positions. Close some revanchist issues. I think…even though I’ve been saying this for five years, I’m still ending my career. So I will probably fight two or three times and gradually finish it.

— After you left the UFC, the US Anti-Doping Agency stopped testing you. Is there anything you can now use to restore what wasn’t possible before?

“I have used what you are talking about twice, when I had very serious injuries, when I had four operations on my leg for example. And that was even before the UFC, I was using growth hormone and testosterone for 3-4 months. And I didn’t see any effect. For some reason, I was filled with about five kilograms of water, and that’s it, no special strength, no special endurance, aggressiveness, desire to train. So I don’t think this will help one way or another. I can now drink certain things like Mildronate without any worries. I drink them in normal human quantities, but I don’t see the point in bothering and injecting myself with anything.

—So now you would barely pass the USADA test?

– Well, I think so, because of the same meldonium, perhaps, or because of something else made in the Soviet Union, I would not have succeeded. And I don’t accept anything other than that.

— Did you actually take Mildronate treatment as soon as you left the UFC?

– Yes, I took a course of treatment for a month, that’s all. Why not? All our athletes and ordinary people have been drinking it for several decades. And now he’s become kind of a big dope.

— Khadis Ibragimov recently said that after the UFC he first earned half that amount, and now his fee has increased eight times what it was before. Have your prices changed since the UFC?

– No. Almost the same. Plus or minus 10%, more often more, I get about the same fee here that I had in the UFC (Oleynik previously said that his guaranteed payment for participating in a fight in the UFC was 120 to $140,000 – “”).

— In rubles, it’s around 10 million?

– Let the organizers of my fights talk about it, I will not violate the terms of the contract. The amount is proportional to what I had in the UFC. But here I don’t have taxes like in America. I don’t pay the manager, or at least not as much as I used to. I already had a small management contract, but now I hardly have any.

—If you come to Florida now, do you have a place to stay?

— I have several friends there with whom I can stay at any time.

– You don’t have anything of your own?

— I have a house that is now for sale. And it’s been on sale for five or six months now.

— Maybe we should contact Al Iaquinta, who is also a real estate agent in New York (former rival of Khabib Nurmagomedov in the title fight – )?

— As far as I know, in America everyone works strictly in their own region, and real estate agents in Florida only work in their own region.

— You appeared in a photo with Ruslan Chagaev, former professional boxing world champion. Did you train together?

“We worked in the same room for three months. We did strength and conditioning together. And we did 10-12, maybe 15 boxing workouts, we spread out a little bit, and he explained some details to me: raise your shoulders here, don’t fall here, position your legs like That. He shared some very important practical secrets. Approximately how I can show a person who has been practicing jiu-jitsu for five years two, three or four nuances that now prevent him from developing further, and in the same way Ruslan Chagaev suggested to me some points in boxing.

— In the last two years, have you seen anything in jiu-jitsu or grappling that impressed you, or something you would like to understand how to do?

– No, I see development, I see that new techniques are being invented. Techniques appear that never existed. A sort of intertwining with one leg and two arms, something else. I’m sure this didn’t happen 10 or 15 years ago. And you can see how it all evolves. I myself personally proposed two or three techniques that no one had ever shown me in my life, and I understand that any passionate master who lives by this can offer something, but there are thousands of such masters in the world. Every six months, someone comes up with a trick.

— You are seen as a very dangerous grappler in MMA, someone good at submissions, but I remember you fought a very strong grappler, Gordon Ryan, and you lost. What is the main difficulty in dealing with it?

— This can be difficult with anyone. Some are physically strong, others are technically strong. He is terribly physically strong. Like a bear. He has a very cool jiu-jitsu technique. By the way, the next day we were working at the UFC Performance Institute, and I choked him twice, unfortunately it wasn’t during the fight anymore. I didn’t know the crown of his heel, I reached up and let it settle into place and my heel ended up in his hands. He made a very simple gesture, but he played it with great composure and efficiency. The next day we worked with him and there were no more problems.

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.