“Kazakhstan is my native country.” Police prevented a thunderbolt at Khabib’s tournament and Shlemenko received a new challenge

What did Khabib do?

Over the past five months, Khabib Nurmagomedov has rarely spoken publicly in Russian. But at a league tournament in Kazakhstan, he took the microphone, stood in a cage, and gave a two-minute speech:

“It’s a pleasure to be with you. Tens of thousands of people have gathered here. I would like to remember 2016-2017 when I was in Kazakhstan. I said that you need to organize more tournaments, more competitions, and in 5-6 years you will have the best fighters. And now we are here, and you have 6-7 fighters in the UFC. Two of them are in the top 15, they are performing well. There’s even a competitor – this is Shavkat [Рахмонов] is sitting. Today there are many young people here, many children. Not everyone, but someone will be addicted, they will train, perform and in 10 years they can become a legend of this sport. Such competitions should take place more… Our youth…. Why I say “ours”, because Kazakhstan is my native country. Even in this city, as you know, there is a large diaspora, many Dagestanis live here. Our Caucasian ancestors lived here. We had a good relationship for many years, history bound us. So thank you very much. We need to organize more such tournaments,” Nurmagomedov said.

After the tournament, Khabib did not speak to reporters, league president and Nurmagomedov’s senior friend Shamil Zavurov explained this with the upcoming early departure.

For the people of Aktau, Khabib’s league brought 16 fights, and in terms of matchmaking, it was an almost perfect job: only two fights made it to the judges’ decision. But here you need to understand what the “tens of thousands of people” are watching the tournament on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

A cage for MMA has been placed on the city embankment. Four yurts have been set up next door: two dressing rooms, a press yurt and another for dinner for special guests. All this was fenced with a two-layer fence, where there was a distance of 1.5-2 meters between the layers of the fence, filled with police or SOBR. The details of it all are easy to draw: lots of hats, really thousands of people watching the fights behind the fence, and around 500 seats. The two changing yurts are two yurts for 32 fighters, each with at least one second. For the inhabitants, the double fence does not become an obstacle, but a test of ingenuity – very soon walls of rags will begin to rise in the press yurt, and teenagers will come out from under it to dissolve in the crowd .

Apparently, somewhere nearby was the most vulnerable spot in the fence. All this against the background of one of the hottest days, when the temperature rose to +42 degrees.

Khabib appears on the site around 9:00 p.m., with him and his entourage, eight sobrists, but the children are still trying to step over the fence for nothing in the world. The hero becomes a teenager in beige shorts, who takes a selfie against the backdrop of Nurmagomedov’s caravan and then flees from the security guards for about 40 minutes, appearing in different places on the site.

how they fought

Almost every fighter is called back for something. Norik Tadevosyan, on the way from the airport to the hotel, said that he had to become a local star and conquer the public.

As a result, Norik already remembered the weigh-in: he did not come out in his pair, stood on the stage, and then left it, seeing that it was not his opponent. Something went wrong for Tadevosyan in the fight and he lost in the first three minutes. His opponent Magomed Gadzhiyasulov admitted that he heard a lot about Norik at the hotel a day before the fight.

American Joseph Henl fought back, won, went to the ER and managed to come back mid-tournament with a cast and a huge X-ray. “My arm is broken,” said the American with satisfaction.

Sergei Kalinin fought all three rounds. He was born in 1998 or 1999, but he came out on the song Rammstein Du hast. “I listen to it since childhood, it charges me,” Kalinin explained. He honestly admitted that fighting three rounds on the street, where he was at +42 most recently, is a bit difficult: “You get tired faster, it’s hard. It’s much better to play indoors, it’s hard to fight and warm up on the street.

A young fighter from Khabib’s team, Renat Khavalov, defended the championship belt in the bantamweight division and complained to his corner about the opponent in the middle of the fight: “He misses a lot.” Khavalov, 23, is another generation of students of Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov. “I remember I was 16-17 years old. I trained with Azamat Gashimov and Abdulmanap came to our training sessions and watched. I remember I was already in the national group, he came, started watching, then I became with good guys and fought on equal terms, in boxing. I remember he called me, said:

– What’s your name?

—Renate.

– What year?

— 1998.

– It works well. Go to battle.

And that’s it, from that moment I noticed that he was looking, looking. He didn’t show it, but I knew he was watching.”

Khavalov trains with Umar Nurmagomedov and says Islam Makhachev on the eve of the fight sent “a lot of voice messages, telling how to work, what to do and everything like that.” Khavalov worked in the best family traditions.

What happened in the main battle

Gamzat Hiramogomedov and Dauren Ermekov fought. We have already told their story. In addition, they were followed at number one by Khabib Nurmagomedov and Shavkat Rakhmonov (a UFC fighter, he won all his professional fights earlier than expected). In the middle of the first round, Hiramagomedov “ate” a backlash and was no longer the same. Ermekov managed to translate and finished on the ground.

“Thanks to Gamzat, he promoted this fight, I myself am not active in this regard,” the modest Ermekov said after the fight. – Yes, even in [социальных сетях]…I can’t direct them. Of course I expected more, I thought we would fight for five rounds, we would cut each other, but I looked and realized after the first round he was already hooked. Maybe the climate, maybe the weather influenced. I myself didn’t feel that I had hit, I just looked up once and saw that he was slowing down, his eyes rolled up. I see it’s hard for him. I heard the seconds yelling at him “get up”, but he couldn’t get up, I was controlling him, he would have a hard time doing it.

In a 10-minute interview with Ermekov after the fight, the names of Vladimir Mineev and Faridun Odilov most often sounded. At the same time, at the end of the interview, Ermekov for some reason spoke about Shlemenko. We have decided to specify:

– Do you really want to fight Shlemenko?

– If there were any jokes here, it wouldn’t be theirs. I am ready for big challenges.

Is Shlemenko more interesting than Mineev or Odilov?

– These three fighters would be the most interesting now.

Just in case: Ermekov has an interim championship belt. Odilov is a permanent Eagle FC league champion. Mineev is the Fight Nights middleweight champion, and with this organization, the EFC will host a joint tournament in September. Shlemenko does not have a championship belt, but remains a very popular fighter throughout the post-Soviet space.

In the cage, Ermekov was congratulated by Khabib and Shavkat Rakhmonov. It took a corridor of 50 police to evacuate them. Khabib managed to dissolve, and Ermekov went to give an interview, and it was noticed how layers of people condensed around him, shouting “Dauren”. The fact that the fans here love the density was warned in advance, but even better, the police were warned about it, which brilliantly arrested people. It was a bit scary when Yermekov fans started descending en masse to the tent where the interview was taking place, but it didn’t work here either. The championship belt was defended even without the participation of the champion himself.