By Vestnik Kavkaza
The main event of the international MMA tournament M-1 will be a rematch between the holder of the champion belt Vyacheslav Vasilevsky and the former champion Ramazan Emeev, and also a rematch between Tural Ragimov and reigning M-1 Challenge featherweight champion Ivan Buchinger.
On the eve of the international MMA tournament M-1 Challenge 56, the president of M-1 Global league Vadim Finkelstein spoke about how this sport is currently developing. The main event of M-1 Challenge 56 will be a title rematch between middleweight champion Vyacheslav Vasilevsky and former champion Ramazan Emeev. In addition, the audience expects a rematch between one of the best fighters of the past year Tural Ragimov (Mamishev Team) and reigning M-1 Challenge featherweight champion Ivan Buchinger (MMA Spirit).
According to Finkelstein, today MMA is developing very quickly, and the clubs are “growing like mushrooms”, MMA Academies are being opened, team competitions are held regularly, cups, Grand Prix all over Russia. "All of this makes me happy. I do not see major problems, god grant, we will handle everything and will grow, develop, and improve the quality of the approach to the promotion, to the television picture," - the president of the league said, adding that today about 100 countries are watching MMA.
“Speaking about todays’ development of MMA in general, of course, there are very strong fighters in Russia. We have a very strong amateur organization, the Union of Russian MMA, which is headed by Fedor Emelianenko,” Finkelstein said. According to him, in 2014 alone about 7,000 people participated in the qualifying rounds to get to the championship of Russia." It wasn’t strange that almost all gold medals from the World and European Championships were taken away by Russians," the president of M-1 league said.
Speaking about the development of MMA in Russia, Finkelstein explained that this is "long and laborious work," but the level of Russian fighters today is no different from other world-class organizations of the same direction: "A lot of guys are going to other organizations, in the US, for example, and they are feeling very good there."
