Fight Nights: Battle 16 - GTO Official Discussion

The weigh ins and the pre-event press conference are done. All the 4 heavyweights involved in the main and co-main event made weight and were calm and relaxed, though apparently for different reasons.

Brett Rogers said that his friend Kenny Garner has revealed to him the secret to beat Malikov and his training partner Brock Lesnar has helped him to improve his wrestling a lot, so he's confident in the outcome.

Magomed Malikov said that while he was pretty pumped up before, now is the time of Ramadan which requires him to restrain all the negative emotions, but he will still have plenty of energy for the fight itself (which is OK).

Both Erokhin and Andryszak when asked for predictions and a possible rematch agreed that it's far too early to talk about a rematch and even refrained from predicting how the fight itself will go down, except that it will most probably be a stand-up affair.

The event itself is also significant, because it's part of the revival of the old Soviet tradition of GTO ("Готов к труду и обороне СССР" i.e. "Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR") - minus of course the "Soviet" part - a physical culture programme present in the USSR for over 50 years, which put a strong emphasis on health, condition and physical development of the entire population by introducing people to - and involving them - in various physical activities. The programme was abandoned after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but has been making a slow comeback since early 2000s and earlier this year president Putin (no relation to the Canadian cuisine) has officially signed on the return of the initiative in the modern Russian Federation under the traditional name minus the "USSR" part.

So in case you were wondering, both the poster and the trailer (which I recommend watching, since it's really well done) are not just funny parodies of the bygone era.

Magomed Magomedov   vs.   Alexei Shapovalov --> Magomedov via armbar 1st rd

Akhmet Aliev   vs.   Pavel Nikolaenya --> Aliev via KO 2nd rd

Alexei Kunchenko   vs.   Felipe Salvador Nsue Ayiugono --> via KO 3rd rd

* Edited at 07.11.2014, 2:56 PM ET *

Does anyone have a stream to this? Really want to see the top two fights.

http://en.glaz.tv/online-tv/rossiya-2

Thanks man, really appreciate it!

@Joe thanks for that very interesting history lesson. I think it is obvious Putin plans to take over the world with an army of 50 million mixed martial artists. The rest of the world will look back and remember this is the event that started it all. Well played, Putin. 

What happened to Malikov?

Broke his leg. Rogers checked it and it snapped.

Damn. Not as bad as the more recent ones but still vicious.