Five days before the RCC 13 tournament, in which Russian mixed martial arts fighters Alexander Shlemenko and Magomed Ismailov will meet in the main fight, a press conference was held for the main participants of the event. They shared their expectations and had a heated argument about which of them deserved to participate in the title fight.
The fight between Magomed Ismailov and Alexander Shlemenko was announced back in December 2021 at the RCC 10 tournament in Yekaterinburg. Then Ismailov went into the cage, took the microphone and challenged Alexander to a fight. Only now Shlemenko was not present in the hall, he got in touch with his future opponent in the usual format – via Zoom directly from his office and accepted the challenge.
Athletes exchanged barbs against each other in the media, but they never entered the cage in the summer. First, the battle was moved from July to August, and then to December. In both cases, the reason for the transfer was that Ismailov did not have time to heal his knee injury.
During a press conference, Ismailov said that during the upcoming fight he expects to “fight bone to bone, head to head.” The fighters staged a long and uncompromising argument over who should fight for the title.
Ismailov said that the champion will be determined in his fight with Shlemenko. Ragozin joined the controversy, wondering how Ismailov can fight for the title, speaking at the RCC tournament for the first time. Then Shlemenko cited the example of the fight between Petr Yan and Jose Aldo.
“The man lost two fights in a row and fought for the title in the best organization in the world, as they say. Could it be, or can it not? Shlemenko emphasized.
The dispute continued for another 10 minutes, and the fighters did not come to a common opinion.
The fight between Ismailov and Klimenko will last five rounds. Many believe that this is a problem for Magomed. But he himself does not think so, noting that now is the very moment when it is time to accept a five-round confrontation.
Details in the exclusive material of Izvestia:
“Title failure: Shlemenko and Ismailov warmed up in words”
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