On December 3, 2009, the final of the first ever Russian team championship in mixed martial arts M-1 Selection took place in St. Petersburg. The strongest clubs of the country, Highlander and Red Devil, met. By the final fifth fight of the team fight, the mountaineers were already leading 3-1 and the title of champions was won by them ahead of schedule. But at the same time, the fight of heavyweights aroused great interest among spectators and specialists, since a legendary and very deserved fighter entered the ring that evening.
Ibragim Magomedov is the star of the M-1 and 2H2H tournaments, having played since the beginning of the 2000s. Two-time world champion and European champion, who crushed a huge number of foreign stars in tough battles. In the near future, we will definitely publish his fights on our channel, because this is a real classic and old-school mixed martial arts.
But that evening he was opposed by a very young fighter who in the future was to become one of the main Russian stars in the world MMA and win the M-1 Challenge and Bellator heavyweight titles. There was no matchmaking in the team tournament, and only the coaching staff of the team determined who to fight. A week before the competition, the Red Devil management offered to fight Alexander Volkov, who just six months earlier had started his professional career and joined the team quite recently. And a young student of Moscow University named after Bauman accepted the challenge, which not only left him with a titanium plate in his hand, broken in the first round, for all future years, but also radically changed his fate.
It is this fight that Alexander himself, many years later, will call the main incentive and impetus for the development of his professional career. And the audience for many years remembered the incredibly stubborn and strong-willed battle of the two legends.