“We have Fedor the Russian. His thing is inflicting death on people,” said Donald J. Trump in 2008, breathlessly in awe of Fedor Emelianenko, a world-renowned, Russian mixed martial arts (MMA) cage-fighter. “It’s sort of like, you just — somebody dies!”
Back in 2008, Trump and his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, teamed up with a St. Petersburg, Russia, fight promoter, Vadim Finkelchtein, bringing Emelianenko to Las Vegas to headline what Trump dubbed Affliction Entertainment. Affliction held two bouts of the bloody, no-holds-barred combat sport, typified by the billion-dollar Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) empire run continuously since 2001 by Trump’s friend, Dana White.
But for many years, Emelianenko has been intimately associated with his chief Russian admirer, President Vladimir Putin. Perhaps closely enough that, in 2018, a pair of FBI agents tracked down Emelianenko before a bout in Chicago and sat him down for an interview. Though the reason for that interview is still officially unexplained, it occurred at the height of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, just two weeks after the FBI raided Cohen’s home and office.
That Trump has been long enraptured by the ultra-macho, bloody violence of MMA and the UFC is well known. The day following his conviction in New York in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, Trump got a conqueror’s welcome at a UFC event in Newark, New Jersey, entering the arena to the booming sounds of the Kid Rock anthem, “American Bad Ass” – sample lyrics: “Chosen one, I’m the living proof” – and a raucous welcome from the nearly 20,000 people in attendance, who chanted, “Fuck Joe Biden!” and “We love Trump!”
And the final night of the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee last month was a testosterone-soaked spectacle led by the shirt-ripping wrestling all-star, Hulk Hogan; by Linda McMahon, the billionaire who, along with her husband Vince McMahon, founded UFC two decades ago; and by the UFC’s Dana White – himself introduced by Kid Rock – who got the nod to introduce Trump as the party’s nominee that evening.
Emelianenko, currently living in Russia, would have fit right in.
Now retired from the octagon, Emelianenko is considered by many to have been the greatest MMA fighter of all time. The Ukrainian-born, Russian powerhouse is also one of the sport’s scariest, battle-scarred combat veterans. As one sports psychologist told Fighters Only magazine, “When the referee tells them to head back to their corners, Fedor suddenly darts a short look directly at his opponent – or through his opponent, I should say. This kind of look is associated with antisocial behavioral disorders and psychopaths. They don’t look at you, they look through you. … Fedor makes you think: I might die.”
Trump’s venture with Emelianenko lasted only the two bouts, “Affliction: Banned” and “Affliction: Day of Reckoning,” for which Emelianenko was paid $300,000 per event. A third bout, “Affliction: Trilogy,” was cancelled. And a Trump-backed scheme to film a 15-episode reality TV series in St. Petersburg, to be called “Fighting Fedor,” got nowhere. Like many of Trump’s ventures – Trump University, Trump Steaks, and Trump Vodka – it was a failure.
Emelianenko’s Putin Connection
Besides his ferocity in the ring, Emelianenko has a political side, too – one that further binds him to Vladimir Putin. When former Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev left his post with Russia’s Council of Physical Fitness & Sports, Putin signed a decree appointing Emelianenko to the spot. In 2010, Emelianenko ran and was elected to a local parliament as a member of Putin’s United Russia party. And, according to his Wikipedia page, citing Russian-language sources, Emelianenko has expressed support for Putin’s wars in Syria and Ukraine and for Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
As Vice Sports’ Fightland has pointed out, “No tie binds a man to the heart of Vladimir Putin like Emelianenko.” Putin and Emelianenko have a close bond, forged out of Putin’s admiration for the MMA fighter’s fierce competitiveness and sheer power and Emelianenko’s reverence for Putin. “I haven’t trained with [Putin] personally, but I know people who have, and he’s a powerful fighter, particularly in judo and sambo,” said Emelianenko in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “Vladimir Putin is made of steel.”
There are countless photographs of Putin and Emelianenko together, and Putin has spared no praise for the Ukraine-born Russian. “I want to congratulate Fedor and thank him from all of us martial arts fans,” Putin once declared. “It is because of him this sport became so popular in our country.”
Not only is Putin, like Trump, an MMA devotee, but combat sports are his personal forte. “Putin has been practicing judo since he was 11 years old,” according to Putin’s own Kremlin web page. “‘I was just a boy when I started judo. I became deeply interested in martial arts, their special philosophy, culture, relations with the opponent and the rules of combat.’” He holds the title of Master of Sports in judo and in September 2006 he became the honorary president of the European Judo Union. “Putin is also multiple champion of St. Petersburg in Sambo and Master of Sports in Sambo. He holds a black belt in karate,” according to the Kremlin. (Sambo, if you’re not familiar with it, is a legacy sport of the old Soviet Red Army.)
Dr. Kenneth Dekleva, a former State Department medical officer and shrink who served in Moscow, wrote a Putin profile for the Cipher Brief. “Martial arts and the study of Judo has likely shaped Putin’s personality as much as any other activity,” wrote Dekleva. “Putin has cleverly utilized ‘martial arts diplomacy’ to further informal, highly-publicized, personal relationships with well-known martial artists, such as the U.S. actor and martial artist Steven Seagal (who holds a 7th-dan rank in aikido and whom Putin granted honorary Russian citizenship in 2016) to further his own political and strategic goals.”
Emelianenko’s manager, who shepherded his appearances with Trump’s Affliction Entertainment, put it bluntly. “Fedor works for Putin,” he told the Daily Beast in 2018. “He’s close to Mr. Putin and a big supporter of Mr. Putin, and will probably go back to work, after all this is over, for the Russian government.”
A Violent ‘Sport’
Trump and Putin are thus both fans of an ultraviolent, often injury-producing spectacle that, unlike American professional wrestling, is not staged or “fake.”
If you’re not familiar with the world of ultimate fighters, UFC and MMA fights have resulted in at least five deaths in the United States alone since 2007 in officially sanctioned bouts and many others in unsanctioned, unregulated and/or illegal fights. (John McCain, who later softened his opinion of the sport, once described it as “human cockfighting.”) It pitched itself as a real-life version of the video game Mortal Kombat.
At its founding, UFC events were deemed to be so dangerous and offensive that dozens of U.S. states banned them outright. But Trump was undeterred, and thus UFC’s very first fights were staged at Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City in 2001. “Nobody took us seriously. Except Donald Trump,” said Dana White, UFC’s president. “Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC, and encouraged us to build our business. He hosted our first two events at his venue, he dealt with us personally, he got in the trenches with us, and he made a deal that worked for everyone.”
Over time, UFC went from boasting that its fights had no rules at all to instituting some moderating guidelines that allowed it to ease back into the mainstream, and eventually UFC – originally broadcast on Fox Sports Net – made deals with ESPN and Disney, and with sponsors such as Budweiser.
But it isn’t just their addiction to violent sport that Trump and Putin have in common. In Russia, throughout major parts of eastern and central Europe, and increasingly in the United States, MMA is associated with
white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and others who’ve rallied in support of Trump’s right-wing, America-first nationalism and Putin’s Slavic/Russian nationalism and Orthodox Church fundamentalism.
Both Trump and Putin have cultivated a political appeal to white nationalist, religious and even neo-Nazi subcultures in the United States and Russia, respectively, and the Emelianenko brothers – along with the MMA culture itself – appeal to many of the supporters of the two presidents. “The MMA subculture in Russia has also become mixed with nationalism as some clubs have strived to train only ethnically Slavic Russians rather than people from the mostly Muslim North Caucasus region, where combat sports are enormously popular,” reported AFP. “Some amateur tournaments do not allow non-Slavic Russian fighters from the turbulent southern region, home to many of the country’s successful wrestlers.”
Alexander Emelianenko, the black-sheep brother of Fedor Emelianenko, was trained to fight by his older brother and he has won several championships, including the 1999 European Sambo championship. In 2008, he was originally slated to participate in Trump’s “Affliction: Banned” event, but he was disqualified for reasons that remain unclear. In 2014, Alexander Emelianenko was found guilty of sexually assaulting a housecleaner, and he served about half of his 54-month prison sentence.
More relevant to politics, though, much of Alexander Emelianenko’s body is covered with tattoos, and they’ve been widely written about, analyzed, and interpreted. Suffice it to say that many of the tattoos are said to be symbolic of both the Nazi subculture and the Russian criminal underworld, and one tattooed phrase on Alexander Emelianenko reads “Gott Mitt uns” (“God with us”), the slogan or motto of the Nazi Wehrmacht and the Nazi SS. (For his part, Alexander Emelianenko denies any specific political leanings and rejects any connection with extremists.)
In Russia and spreading into other countries, there’s another connection between MMA and the ultra-right: the popular swag associated with White Rex, a Russian clothing line associated with that country’s MMA world and one of the competitors of Affliction Clothing. White Rex has developed a well-earned reputation for catering to neo-Nazis, fascists and white supremacists. On its website, WhiteRexStore.com, it says: “White Rex is a Russian mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion, aggressive clothing, and sports gear company that advocates pan-European pride and traditional values. White Rex encourages all Europeans to embrace the warrior spirit of their ancestors, and fight back against the modern world.”
A detailed, and scary, take-down of White Rex by Karim Zidan describes the company’s panoply of mystical, occult, pagan, and outright Nazi-like symbols. “Some of the White Rex shirts openly state slogans such as ‘Zero Tolerance,’ ‘Angry Europeans,’ and ‘White Rex Against Tolerance.’ Others, including women’s wear, sport symbols such as ‘88,’ which stands for ‘Heil Hitler,’” wrote Zidan.
“The inherently violent nature of combat sports arguably provides an effective medium to promote equally violent ideologies,” he added. “While political examples include Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov using MMA as a tool for propaganda and a farming system for his private army, social examples include the rise of neo-Nazism within certain crevasses in the sport. White Rex’s existence and decision to brand itself under the guise of combat sports apparel speaks to the ongoing correlation between the two phenomena.”
According to a Czech antifascist group, antifa.cz, the Russia-based White Rex brand is becoming wildly popular among far-right organizations in Western Europe. A story on White Rex by the group, replete with photos of muscled and tattooed skinheads, reported: “Even though the owner keep[s] denying it, one doesn’t have to be a genius to understand that White Rex targets mainly neo-Nazis,” adding that the brand “has lately become a prestige matter for representatives of different neo-Nazi organizations from [all of] Europe.”
It’s unclear whether Trump’s well-known penchant for admiring authoritarian leaders and strongmen around the world – from Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi to the leaders of Turkey, Egypt, and North Korea – will lead him to start wearing anything from the White Rex clothing line anytime soon. But it isn’t far from his fascination with Emelianenko’s brutal sport to his promise, if elected, to pardon the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021.
Bob Dreyfuss is an award-winning investigative journalist living in northern New Jersey.
Trump loses the election and calls for Civil war. Putin wishes to destroy the world, nukes everything. Trump has always been fully aware of Putin’s “plan”, since Helsinki 2018. Trump runs away in his plane. The world is undone as the world burns.