An interview with Fedor's striking coach

maximmm

Green Belt
@Green
Joined
Jan 1, 2007
Messages
1,395
Reaction score
363


This dude has been with Fedor nearly since the beginning alongside Voronov

The most useful bits that I found, while listening to this interview, is his explanation for Fedor's lack of ground game in the latter fights of his career. Basically, he says it's due to his numerous injuries (his back being a big one). He'd often skip certain ground game training sessions because of his injuries and focus on his stand-up instead.

Another interesting thing is how .... unwilling Fedor is to ever discuss/disclose his injuries even with his coaches. While in beginning it was easy enough to figure out when Fedor was injured... later, Mitchkov figured things out not because Fedor would say he had pain in this or that part of his body, but rather by noticing that when his coaches would offer him a bunch of training sessions, he'd simply say that can't do this or that without any further explanation. It's pretty surreal that he wouldn't talk to his coaches, so that they could try to work around his injuries, but there it is. It also puts Fedor's responses during interviews in a very different light - he ain't gonna share any details, no matter how hard you drill him.

Anyways, this helps to explain how Fedor devolved from the best all around fighter into a one dimensional one.

Edit:
Since some people mentioned the Bader fight - Mitchkov says Fedor was really sick for about a week just prior to the Bader fight. People tried to talk him into dropping out of the fight, but he insisted on fighting. Mitchkov says that most of the things he's picked up in the training camp just prior to the fight were all gone due to the illness.

A few other bits - Fedor never watched his opponent's fights prior, during, or after his training - he expected his coaches to do it for him. Mitchkov has never seen any other fighter who would opt out of watching the opponent fights. He's also never seen any fighter as calm as Fedor prior to his fights. The one fight Fedor was visibly excited about, when it was booked, was the Crocop fight (after Crocop KO'd his brother).

Another thing i wanted to mention - watching russian mma youtube interviews is a wonderful experience - they timestamp every question so that viewers wouldn't be wasting their time. Western counterparts with their clickbait titles could learn a LOT from these journalists. Greed and lack of respect for viewers is a vile thing.
 
Last edited:
Bingo! I've always said (even though it had been undisclosed by his camp until now) that Fedors lack of grappling was due to a back injury (many times, while others hypothesized it was due to his hand injuries, grip strength and other far fetched ideas... It's in my post history) , it just made sense... Being someone that has hurt his back grappling before, I knew all along.


If he hadn't hurt his back, compressed his disc's and fused them or whatnot, he would have maintained that high level for longer. Of course a dual career in mma and Sambo competition simultaneously is gonna do that to your back. It was common sense to think so.


I also knew that Fedors nature was preventing him from disclosing his injuries, why would he give that info to his opponents?
 
Fedor has a bad habbit of leaning back to avoid punches, it really cost him in his strikeforce fights..I wonder if that coach ever raised that issue with him or maybe he was the cause of it ?

Fedor was dopped out on painkillers for his fight with Bader, that's why he was so slow to react to Bader's punch. He was probably half coherent and moving in slow motion. Taktarov picked up on it straight away and called for a rematch.

You can see Fedor injecting stuff in the old Red Devil fight club videos. I am guessing his painkiller use started there under Vadim Finkelstien
 
Bingo! I've always said (even though it had been undisclosed by his camp until now) that Fedors lack of grappling was due to a back injury (many times, while others hypothesized it was due to his hand injuries, grip strength and other far fetched ideas... It's in my post history) , it just made sense... Being someone that has hurt his back grappling before, I knew all along.


If he hadn't hurt his back, compressed his disc's and fused them or whatnot, he would have maintained that high level for longer. Of course a dual career in mma and Sambo competition simultaneously is gonna do that to your back. It was common sense to think so.


I also knew that Fedors nature was preventing him from disclosing his injuries, why would he give that info to his opponents?

Fedor was an explosive heavyweight, that explosiveness combined with his weight probably messed up his back. His subpar punching technique probably damaged his hands.

His style is probably not suited for a long heavyweright career
 
Fedor has a bad habbit of leaning back to avoid punches, it really cost him in his strikeforce fights..I wonder if that coach ever raised that issue with him or maybe he was the cause of it ?

Fedor was dopped out on painkillers for his fight with Bader, that's why he was so slow to react to Bader's punch. He was probably half coherent and moving in slow motion. Taktarov picked up on it straight away and called for a rematch.

You can see Fedor injecting stuff in the old Red Devil fight club videos. I am guessing his painkiller use started there under Vadim Finkelstien

Mitchkov talked about the Bader fight - it turns out Fedor was seriously sick just prior to the fight with temperature reaching 39C for 3 days straight.

As for his stand-up.... dunno about him leaning back, but his coach did say that the reason why Fedor always has his hands down is because in the early days Mitchkov tried to get him into a proper classical boxer stance, but Fedor would always complain that he couldn't see and react to punches quickly enough that way. So, Mitchkov relented and told him to use a stance he is more comfortable with.
 
Last edited:
Bingo! I've always said (even though it had been undisclosed by his camp until now) that Fedors lack of grappling was due to a back injury (many times, while others hypothesized it was due to his hand injuries, grip strength and other far fetched ideas... It's in my post history) , it just made sense... Being someone that has hurt his back grappling before, I knew all along.

There's nothing 'far fetched' about those ideas. Hand injuries were constantly cited as a reason he couldn't fight CroCop for over a year, and when he did fight him, Fedor himself said he couldn't GnP like he did before anymore because of hand problems.
 
There's nothing 'far fetched' about those ideas. Hand injuries were constantly cited as a reason he couldn't fight CroCop for over a year, and when he did fight him, Fedor himself said he couldn't GnP like he did before anymore because of hand problems.
I was referring to the causes for his back injury. His hand injuries had nothing to do with him not wanting to grapple anymore, it's most probably from lifting people up all the time and slamming them, getting zingers from poor impromptu double leg takedowns where the head and spine get crunched, and some sambo/judo throws. We saw him do all of these early in his pride career, imagine how many times he did them in Sambo tournaments and behind closed doors in practice.
 
Last edited:
His hand injuries had nothing to do with him not wanting to grapple anymore
OP didnt say anything like that . OP said : "it's due to his numerous injuries (his back being a big one)" . Numerous injuries .
 
OP didnt say anything like that . OP said : "it's due to his numerous injuries (his back being a big one)" . Numerous injuries .
Just the inclusion of mentioning the back proved my point...nobody on sherdog was talking about the possibility that Fedor abandoned his grappling due to his back, people were mentioning his hand mostly.

The back would be the most important injury and devastating to Fedors career since the entire nervous system travels through the spine. You could easily become paralyzed If you power through shit with an injured back.
 
What a mentality and toughness, did Fedor cancel any fight in his career?

For Bader fight, I saw right away that he was moving different, reaction time was slow. Shame he was not 100% to get that last run to the end.
 
Back
Top