July 16, 2008

"I'm ready. It doesn't matter with who or where. On foot or on horseback. With maces or poleaxes. To fight. To first blood or to death. It doesn't matter, I'm ready to fight." — Aleksander Emelianenko.

Living in the shadow of a big brother isn't easy.

When you are in the same profession and he's more accomplished and better known, it's hard to stand in the spotlight unobstructed, as your own man. Side by side, the achievements that you've worked your whole life for, that you've gone through hell for in order to become a better person are less dazzling, less impressive when compared to his. You have less say in your fighting future, less media attention when he's caught in a perpetual avalanche of flash bulbs and microphones. You're fighting on the televised undercard when he's headlining the pay-per-view.

Last month I traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, to spend some time with Aleksander Emelianenko and his family. I wanted to get to know the man, to go beyond the reputation, the rumors. I went to see through the web of tattoos and find out who he really is and what life means to him. To observe him alone, in other words, if only fleetingly.

St. Petersburg, often called the Venice of the North, is only 600 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. Because of the tilt of the planet, during summer in the northern hemisphere, it's light here almost 24 hours a day for most of a month and a half. Celebrating warm weather and perpetual daylight — it's the exact opposite in winter — the people here often spend whole nights outside, taking in the atmosphere, sightseeing, partying. The center of the city is beautiful, green, airy, built almost entirely in the same style of architecture dating back to its founding just more than 300 years ago.

I like being here. It's refreshing to hear and see so many foreigners (tourism is still in embryonic stages in Russia, and it's still startling to hear other languages spoken around you). The city gives me hope for the future, glimpses of a Russia that is an inextricable part of Europe, whose citizens feel part of the world community and can come and go as they please. This freedom, what St. Petersburg represents, is perhaps part of the reason Aleksander Emelianenko chose to move here in 2003, leaving behind his home city of Stary Oskol and his past there for good.

Aleks and his family live in a pre-Stalin-era building, not far from Nevsky Prospect — St. Petersburg's main street and the cultural and business heart of the city. The sprawling, sweeping staircase leading to their top-floor apartment is crumbling, dilapidated, looks like a movie set that had been submerged in deep water for a long time and then drained. The communal interiors of apartment buildings in almost the entire country are the same (particularly from this period or earlier): Mostly everything that didn't belong directly to someone was left to fight its own losing battle with entropy.

In contrast, their apartment is large, modern, airy and cozy. Emelianenko, with his size and ink, looks incongruous amongst the baby furniture and toys, the artwork, the office corner. We settle in on opposing armchairs, Aleksander against a window and next to a very large photograph of him and his wife and decide to let the interview run for as long as it takes. The discussion is only briefly interrupted by the arrival of Olya Emelianenko, their 10-month-old daughter, and two small dogs. Outside, it's suddenly gotten darker and is now raining. Aleks helps with the stroller and we continue, every so often accommodating the opinions of his baby daughter, who's now happily perched on his knee.

Initially I was going to write an article on Aleks based on the interview. However, back home in Moscow, going over the interview material, I quickly understood that I would never be able to fit even a small portion of everything that we talked about into a piece that wasn't the length of a New Yorker magazine article. So I think it's best to leave things as they are, and present the unabridged version of our discussion.

One final point to make. You will inevitably be looking for confirmation or denial of the rumors that Aleks spent time in prison. He steadfastly maintains that he did not. Of his tattoos, he says that they are a collection of beautiful pictures, some of which he designed himself, and that any similarities to those in "Eastern Promises" are purely coincidental.

Sherdog.com: Tell me about your very first memory. Not something that you think is important, but your very first.

Emelianenko: I don't even know. Speaking honestly, my childhood seems shrouded in fog and I really don't remember any specific moments that really stood out.

I do have, you know, fragments. I remember something here. Then when I talk about some occurrence, again I'll remember something else.

I can remember that I was forgotten in kindergarten. My parents had to pick me up, and I almost ended up staying the night with the night watchman because they forgot to. Finally my mother came at almost midnight. They forgot that I was in the kindergarten. I was around 4 or 5 years old.

My mother worked till late, so did my father. They were relying on each other to pick me up, and neither one managed it, and so they forgot about me. I waited with the night watchman, thought that I was spending the night there. She had already made a place for me to sleep, so that I would be ready for the next day. I was ready to go to sleep when they picked me up.

School. I remember school. The very first day. I left. I ran away from school. I have a buddy, a friend who had already been there for a while. We had been going to kindergarten together at one time. His parents asked — I mean they wrote him a note excusing him after lessons. And he came up to me and dishonestly convinced me that it was OK for me, too, to leave and go home. And it was my first day of school and, I don't know, I ran away.

Then I came home to my mother and her belt. I remember we went to his house to play toy soldiers, other toys. We lived right next to each other. I came back home without a thought, thinking that there was going to be a celebration of my first day. And instead I got it really good with the belt. You can't just leave school like that.

Later I remember I fought at school all the time. I even remember the first time I fought. For some reason I fought with older boys all the time — those taller, bigger than me. And what's more, I always fought over silly, little things. First time was a week after I got to school, at the age of 6. And we fought not like kids like to — to push each other with their shoulders or other such things. We fought for real. It was the first time I got hit in the face. I had bruises. But managed to beat my opponent who was about two years older than me. And at that age, even a year, in youth, makes a really big difference. His name was Yura, I think.

Sherdog.com: What do you remember about Yura? Why did you fight?

Emelianenko: He was in a parallel class to me. He'd been at school a long time, was much bigger than everyone else and, as follows, stronger and more arrogant than everyone else. And that's why we got into a fight. I went to try to pit my arrogance, my strength against him. And I hit and hit him, eventually winning and gaining the respect of other students.

He hit me, I hit him. We clinched. I threw him, then hit and hit him once he was on the ground. He screamed until the teachers came and pulled me away. I was one of the biggest kids in my class, which has to be said. Biggest or second biggest in my class.

Sherdog.com: School until the age of 10?

Emelianenko: Yes, I remember. I remember. Until 12 I was a really good student. Then when I transferred … I had a trainer who transferred all the kids who trained wrestling, sambo and judo. The trainer gathered all those kids, from the same age group, into one school, in one class. And so that it would be more convenient, he made arrangements with the teachers for us to go to competitions, to train etc. …

And so at the age of 13 when I moved into this new school, I started getting Cs. So I almost instantly became a straight-C student and began to take my sport more seriously. This was when I was 13. And so that was that. Finished school and went to training school. So. Well, learning came naturally and easily to me, but it was very hard for my teachers to teach me.

Sherdog.com: So why train?

Emelianenko: From the earliest age I wanted to. I wanted to train in sports. From the earliest age. Earlier, when I was little, all of our soccer grounds, hockey rinks were filled. All the kids were doing something. In every yard, in every basement there was some sport to participate in. Karate was starting to gain in popularity. In lots of martial arts schools it was starting to be taught.

But I had already chosen for myself judo from the age of 6, so I continued with it and stood my ground. Just judo and sambo and I didn't deviate away from them. Eventually, just like anyone else within a team, I started arguing with the trainers, leaving the team and dropping judo and sambo. Picking up boxing, training in boxing, then returning to wrestling again. In short, I was looking to find myself in one form of fighting art or another. I like it, I really liked it.

Sherdog.com: Did you ever try any other sports?

Emelianenko: Yes, I tried basketball and really liked it. For example, in the morning or during the day I'd complete my wrestling or boxing training, but I'd know that in the evening the guys would be training basketball. So I'd turn up to their training and tell them that I wanted to learn how to play, and so I'd train with them.

I went and played soccer. … I played many different types of sports. I just really like sports.

Sherdog.com: Which sports teams do you support?

Emelianenko: Well, I was just supporting the St. Petersburg soccer team "Zenit", which just won the UEFA cup. Great work, guys. Then I had to support the Russian national team in ice hockey in the World Cup. They did great and won. Now the Russian national football team is playing in the European championships. I am supporting them. I watch every day, think about the team. They'll win. They'll win Europe. [Russia made it to the semifinals for the first time in more than 20 years but was beaten by the eventual winner, Spain.]

Sherdog.com: I watched the football yesterday in a Russian bar for the first time, with Russian supporters. Lots of swearing. I'd never heard so much swearing in the West from the fans supporting a game, particularly not in an [upscale] bar.

Emelianenko: Is there real swearing in the West? I'm interested.

Sherdog.com: Yes, but it's not nearly as developed and used as it is here [in Russia]. But the funniest thing is that the bar was [upscale] and all the men who were swearing were with well-heeled girls who didn't know what to do at all. The whole bar is looking at their men, and they are sitting there not knowing where to look or what to do with themselves.

Emelianenko: Yeah, no. I think that at functions of this sort it is not necessary at all to take women along. It's better to leave them at home, or send them along to some other event or place. One can always relax and spend time with women, but at events like that, it's better to be among your own kind. To be able to relax completely without feeling self-conscious because of who's present. And the women are probably sitting there not knowing why they have been brought there at all. … They should have left them at home.

Sherdog.com: What kind of a teenager were you in Stary Oskol? What did you do? What were your friends like?

Emelianenko: My friends. My childhood and growing up was, a little … well, not really a little, more like completely — completely different from what happens now. We were basically left to our own devices and to the streets. Everything took place on the street. The street, she brought us up. Made men out of us. Brought us up. We did everything. Everything that was allowed and everything that wasn't allowed.

Sherdog.com: In more detail please.

Emelianenko: In more detail. I don't even know where to start. We played football. In winter we played hockey [laughs].

Sherdog.com: Aside from sport.

Emelianenko: We did everything, you know. Well, you know. If I started for me, it's all normal and not out of the ordinary, you know, about my childhood and when I was a teenager, life and what took place. If I was to start telling today's kids and tried to compare them and their lives to me and my growing up, of course it's going to be completely different.

You know, maybe some things that will be really shocking to a teenager or an adult now, for me, at that time it was in the scope of normality. And nothing out of the ordinary. Just a normal situation.

When we went to fight, I remember, we had in our city this huge conflict. And we fought one inner-city suburb against another. We gathered, something like a thousand of us, and we fought against their thousand. We gathered on one huge, abandoned-building site, picked up sticks, basically anything that came to hand, rocks, and started fighting.

We overturned cars, sometimes police cars. And that's not normal you know. It's youth. Basically, one of our friends was hurt by the kids in the neighboring suburb and then friends of friends and friends of their friends came, and that's how it eventually happened. Many people showed up. The authorities didn't know what to do with us, where to send us.

Sherdog.com: In a fight like that, how do you know who is fighting on whose side?

Emelianenko: Well, all of your foes, they are coming head-on at you. And all of your friends, they're all behind you, supporting you.

Sherdog.com: So with sticks?

Emelianenko: Anything that came to hand basically. Though we tried not to pick up anything that was blatantly a cold weapon, i.e.  knives, stabbing weapons etc. … But still, sometimes …

Sherdog.com: So did you ever get beat up at such things?

Emelianenko: Of course. I'd get it and they'd get it. Everyone would get it at some point. We were young. I was maybe in the 8th or 9th class [13 or 14]. Imagine to yourself, say, 200 kids, 13 or 14, from one side. And a similar group on the other side. Maybe a little older. But really they're children. They get together and start, you know, having watched some movie about something and they pretend. Or they're fired up by some song.

Sometimes some kids didn't even know why they ended up there, or what for. Some are there for their friend etc. … Most fights started over small stuff. Someone took a friend's money, and we went to work things out. Those hooligans called their friends. We called our friends. Everyone called someone, and so god fell on this church [direct translation].

And they had no idea what to do with us. Imagine 500 children. What do you do with them? What did they do? Stood and watched. Called out, tried somehow to separate us and make everyone leave, but it was useless. If today everyone leaves, tomorrow we gather again and it's the same thing.

What do you do? We needed to sort things out. Sometimes it worked. We'd turn up, sort something out and then everyone goes home and things are quiet for a while. Then later again the same thing. And then eventually some of your foes from those fights become really good friends.

Basically like in Russia, a long time ago. Fist fights on holidays and during celebrations. Men would drink, go outside, take their shirts off and then go fight each other in big groups. And straight after all go back to drinking again. Like real men used to do here. Gather, fight and then everything is fine again.

Sherdog.com: What were your parents doing during all this?

Emelianenko: They worked.

Sherdog.com: Are you still friends with anyone from your childhood, from your home city, Stary Oskol?

Emelianenko: When I left the city where I was born, I left everyone I knew there. It's not even that I left them there myself. They decided to stay there themselves, so to speak. All my friends. People of a limited, um, it's not that they had limited perspectives.

They just had limited ways of thinking. People who, farther than the territory, that the place where they live, they can't see beyond that. That's why pulling them after oneself, firstly, it's a great burden, and secondly, I don't see the point. With limited perspective, they choose their mode of life.

No matter how often you put a peasant on a throne, he will remain a peasant. And so it is with my old comrades. There were friends, but then at a given moment, they were suddenly too different, and walked away from me on their own accord. And so I was like a yacht that gathers speed and the others — some keep up, others lag behind.

And then eventually I was left far out, by myself. Some didn't want to, others were scared. Others had more beneficial friends. They bent, went to be friends with those people because they thought they could get from them more than they could get from me. It's life. It happens to everyone. That's why I don't try to pull friends with me. They either keep up on their own or fade behind.

Sherdog.com: When did you leave?

Emelianenko: Five years ago I came here. In five years my circle of acquaintance has completely changed. And the people with whom I communicated prior to that, I can't communicate with them anymore. They have become of no interest to me. And they understand that it's difficult for them to communicate with me. That they couldn't. Because I've changed. My way of thinking has changed, as opposed to those who have stayed behind. They basically stayed, stayed to live there. And I left. Left to move to St. Petersburg.

Sherdog.com: What did you do at the training school? How old were you?

Emelianenko: I was 16. At the training school. I basically had a good time. This was the time when everything got interesting. Hanging out, girls, something else. Something else …

In reality it was a very difficult time that every teenager has to overcome. During the summer, I was training boxing and my mother forbade it. And I didn't tell her that I was going to boxing. I would come home and hide all my gear in the entrance to my building. In a mailbox.

There were these big mailboxes, and I had a whole bag in one of them. There were boxing gloves, training boots, uniform, towels, helmet — I had everything and I hid it there. So I'd say, "Mum, I'm going out for a walk," and she'd say, "OK, son, of course, go", and I would go to the letterbox, get my bag and go to training. I'd train, then go back home and once again hide my stuff and arrive at home and say, "Mum, I've come back from my walk".

And that was at the same time as my peers would be drinking beer and relaxing with girls, and that's how they spent their time. And I would be training and working to achieve certain results. There were many problems, but I overcame them all.

Many of my peers, some became drug addicts. Some were killed, some overdosed. Basically wherever fate would throw them. I can say that of all who I knew, I can't say that any of them have achieved something in this life. They all have disappeared somewhere, have dissolved into nothing.

Sherdog.com: What was the training school? What were you training to be?

Emelianenko: I finished my education as an electric welder. In reality I studied. I gained entry to become an electrician. Then for bad behavior, they transferred me to the lathe operators. Then for bad behavior again, they transferred me to the crane operators. Then for the same reason, they transferred me to the cooks, and then finally they transferred me to the electrical welders. Well, I came to the electric welders.

I'll tell you. The training school, the electrical welder class, when I entered the electric welder class it had just received as a gift from the school this big cake. The cake was for being the best class that half year out of their whole year group. And they were so proper. They almost wore Communist badges, they were so good.

And I came, had a look at everything. And I can't take all the credit [laughs] for making the class do everything that it did from then on. But for some reason, during the next half yearly period, that class became the worst class in the whole school.

And it's not because I blatantly turned the boys bad. I just showed them a few things, ways to see some things. I said that one doesn't need to live by some rules, made by no one knows whom. … One needs to look at things more simply. Doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. One needs to live and live simply. To live and just be happy with life.

Sherdog.com: Why [were you transferred] to the welders after bad behavior?

Emelianenko: They just didn't know what to do with me. Tried to work it out and didn't have anywhere to put me. So they put me in with the welders who were the best class, hoping that that class would change me. But it happened that I changed the whole class instead … 30 people. And they never got that cake again.

Sherdog.com: What were you doing in your personal life at this time?

Emelianenko: Everything was fine. There wasn't anything really out of the ordinary. Well again, it was all just normal. Because I went through everything, and in my own turn I was, so to speak, cooked in this same porridge. Of course now my life is completely different to that which I lived at that time. But it was nothing so out of the ordinary, you know. It's not like there were aliens from another planet, and I spent time with them. Nothing like that.

I can't tell you about anything like that. It was all much simpler. We spent a lot of time on the streets. There was nothing to eat at home. We ate just cooked spaghetti with my brother. Or just potato. In the best scenario, my mother would make a cabbage soup on some kind of bone for bullion. She'd make a nine-liter pot for the whole week. And we'd eat it until we'd finished it. And that's how we ate.

So we had to run around in circles, amuse ourselves and come home to eat because it was the only place we could. It was very hard to train seriously. So we did what we had to. Whatever we had to, to survive. I didn't refuse anything. Didn't turn away from anything. But we didn't do anything that made us less than people.

Sherdog.com: What else were you doing during the madness of the late 1990s in Russia?

Emelianenko: I, at that time, I wanted to say I was learning. In 1999 I won the European championships in sambo. Sport sambo [as opposed to combat]. In the region where I lived, I was the first to show such a result in this sport. And at the same time I became a Russian Master of Sports in judo.

And aside from that, I did what I had to. Well, I didn't screw nuts and bolts in a factory. I didn't unload railway cars. I concerned myself with slightly different things. I don't even know how to describe it to you. Did whatever I had to. I stayed in touch with friends, helped them out. We helped each other out. So. One had one thing. Someone else had something else. And that's how it kind of went, on its own accord. And it didn't seem like anything, you know. You kind of earn and you do it with friends.

It begins with, you know, a friend asking for help. And at that time, what did I need? In 1999 at 17 years old. To eat something, to have clothes, shoes and I didn't have a headache about anything else at that time. Parents didn't earn money at that time. My mother was a teacher in school. My father was a normal worker.

And when I was 14 or 15 and they separated, my father started thinking of his own stomach and his own life. He stopped helping us, stopped helping my mother. If she spent her teacher's salary just on herself, then my father spent his salary just on himself. Didn't help us at all.

Sherdog.com: So did the lack of a father from that point have an influence on your life?

Emelianenko: Well, no. Like I said, they never had time. Not for me. My mother was constantly suffering at work. I never saw my father. The streets brought us up. All these memories, everything that I am remembering of, I want to tell you about something happy, that I remember some happy moments, but there aren't any. They were times of change, hungry times, cold and I grew up on the streets.

Sherdog.com: Are you now in communication with your father?

Emelianenko: No, I haven't spoken to him in a long time. A long time ago we had a conflict, when I was 16 years old, when he told me everything he thought of me. And now that all this time has gone by, the time when I needed him, when I didn't have him there. And now that I have become successful, have become a known person, when people all over the world know me, of course he wants to communicate with me.

But why?

I know everything about this person. What he is really like. I don't know. Of course I could put on a mask. Make friends and sit there with a smile, saying, "Father, I am so happy to see you". But really I think it's better not to communicate with such people. Better than to communicate with them, but through forcing you to do it. Earlier, a few years ago, he used to call. To ask about my life, my health and such. And now he doesn't even call anymore.

Part 2

SherDog.com. Wednesday, July 16, 2008