Heavyweight fights always arouse increased interest among viewers. Especially when these are two formidable giants, behind which fights in organizations such as Pride, K-1 and Shooto and for two they have 37 scalps of defeated opponents.
After a sensational defeat by Magomed Malikov, Alexander Emelianenko made every effort to get back into action as soon as possible and start crushing all opponents again. His next rival was supposed to be Kenny Garner, but the injury interfered with these plans and the Lithuanian Bear Tadas Rimkevichus entered the battle, with dimensions and a record not inferior to Alexander.
This fight took place on March 16, 2012 at the M-1 Challenge 31 tournament at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg.
Having started his career in the Lithuanian tournaments of the Shooto and K-1 HERO`S series, Tadas won 10 victories in 10 battles in a row and was invited to the English Cage Warriors tournament. Then he fought in many tournaments and by the time of the fight with Emelianenko had 25 fights, winning 19 of them. Tadas already had fights with Antonio Silva, Kostya Glukhov and Harry Goodridge behind him, and the fight against Alexander did not frighten him at all, but on the contrary was considered as another step to the top of MMA.