The scandalous fight between Grigory Ponomarev and Muhumat Vakhaev on ASA 161 took place two weeks ago, and the events around it do not subside. Recall that during the fight Ponomarev tried to throw without success and suffered a terrible knee injury, but the opponent continued to finish him off until the referee intervened.
The well-known MMA fighter Oleg Taktarov commented on the episode of Ponomarev’s injury, analyzing it from a technical point of view, but then he also rather harshly assessed Vakhaev’s actions: “There is a purely technical aspect here. Excuse me, please, but no one does tricks while standing up. Well, you put your heel on your knees… You win the fight; actually, two knockdowns are thanks to your jab, so keep up the good work! Where are you taking you? So that? If you’re doing a backbend or any other technique, you should be standing on your fingertips, not your heel. If you watch this fight, he put the heel on him… Imagine 250 kilograms hanging from this heel, if not more (the approximate total weight of the fighters). Naturally, this heel got stuck in the canvas, and that’s it, that’s the knee that turned out.
Well, there are fairy tales besides that the opponent did not see the injury and continued to hit … Let’s keep silent on this topic. I am a fighter and I do not need to tell fairy tales about who did not realize what … he will stay with them. And there (he pointed up.-Approx. “Championship”) they see everything, everything will be decided there. Nothing will go unpunished. Even in the last five years, not a single word or action has gone unpunished,” Taktarov said.
Summary of the main events of the battle between Vakhaev and Ponomarev:
Drama at ACA 161! Ponomarev broke his leg in the first seconds, and for some reason Vakhaev finished him off.
Vakhaev ignored the statement, but ASA chief Mairbek Khasiev was offended by Taktarov’s words. Against this background, the president of the league recalled another case in which he did not like the words of the Russian bear. In 2018, Oleg announced the stealth gene in Khabib Nurmagomedov, commenting on a possible fight between Dagestan and Conor McGregor: “I’m not interested in this fight. It will be a boring fight because Conor will be cautious after two years of inactivity, and Khabib is even more cautious, like a typical highlander. They have a gene for caution. A strong army arrives – they hide in the mountains, everyone disappears somewhere.
Khasiev then reacted with a caustic post on social media: “Man is an amazing creature of all life on earth. A baby monkey will always become a monkey, a piglet a pig, a kid a goat, a foal a donkey! And only a human cub can become any of the above! It’s a shame that the one who was equal to a whole generation of fighters is turning into a mix of not the best individuals on the planet!
After the story with Vakhaev and Ponomarev, Khasiev exactly doubled his words from five years ago, but added a postscript: “Repeat the text of the post from 09/18/18. A spoonful of honey as an excuse for one and a bucket of tar for another! Time passes, everything moves, everything changes and everyone changes! But Oleg is like a stone to which time is not subject! A good fighter stands in the way of the ACA rug!
The league boss is clearly angry that his promotion’s and his nation’s fighter is receiving an onslaught of criticism. This was both after the fight itself had ended and after the ASA awarded Vakhaev a bonus for the early completion of the fight. All these stories were summed up and resulted in a reaction. Also, the fact that Taktarov has a very difficult relationship with Caucasian fighters affected. At first, Oleg seemed to reconcile with Khabib himself and even visited Dagestan, and then he spoke quite impartially about him and his father. Subsequently, his words arose for a long time in various interviews with fighters of this republic.
For example, Oleg’s opinion angered even the usually calm Rustam Khabilov: “He expresses his opinion, says all sorts of things, there is no respect for a person. Dagestan, Dagestan… Is it possible to divide a person into nations? If a person is normal, worthy, good, he is my friend, I will always help him. And if it is a harmful person, like Oleg Taktarov, then you need to drive him away from you, because he will only do a lot of harm. I don’t want to call them bad names. But if I see him, I will definitely say the worst words I know to his face.
Taktarov had his first fight in 15 years and set up a circus with Monson:
strange circus. Taktarov and Monson fought and kicked in a boxing match.
This time, Khasiev’s words to Taktarov did not go unnoticed by Oleg Nikolaevich: “I read what he said. But, as Vladimir Khryunov said, Mairbek was most likely provoked. He is an intelligent man, 63 years of birth. Leo by zodiac sign, this could also affect. It’s so easy to say something so stupid… Hardly. There, of all the troubles, I said that the guy should stand on his toes, not on his heels, especially since the carpet is too soft and, perhaps, his foot fell and got stuck …
You can imagine that a person was so offended by the quality of checkmate (by the way, I think they will change it in the next tournament) that he compared the Russian bear with all these animals listed here. I think that if he makes any other gesture, it will be necessary for him to assess the situation to the head of the Chechen Republic and the President of the Government. I won’t judge those things.
Here, by the way, it is worth noting that Taktarov did not mention his own speech about Vakhaev, which Khasiev focused on, and safely moved on to the topic of the canvas, mentioned in passing. Perhaps this conflict plays out further, as we get to know Mayrbeck as a person who can be tough enough and speak her mind. On the other hand, suddenly everything will calm down until the next case, when Taktarov criticizes some fighter from the Caucasus.
