“When the fight ended, I was both happy and not happy, because I know how Fedor was preparing, I know that he managed to get a little sick in America,” Nemkov said in an interview with the channel Sport24. “The only thing we counted on was that Fedor would hit in the first round and finish the fight ahead of schedule. And then five by five it would be very difficult to fight, because in December Fedor suffered from the coronavirus, swine flu, which I also got ill with.”
“In December, Fedor went to Bahrain for a visa, it was not approved, plus at the same time he had a bite in his lower back, there was an exacerbation of a hernia, and already in January he worked out a little, and his lower back was bitten again. After that, he went to Armenia to get a new visa. In fact, the preparation was very poor and crumpled. The only chance was for a lucky punch, which didn’t happen.”
Recall that the heavyweight title fight between Fedor Emelianenko and Ryan Bader, who led the Bellator 290 tournament in Inglewood, ended with the victory of the current champion by technical knockout at around 2:30 of the first round.