Taktarov will fight with a boxer whom he has only seen in photographs

The fight between Tak­tarov and Jeff Mon­son under MMA rules, sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 29, has been can­celled. Mon­son report­ed this:

“I will have my next fight at REN TV Fight Club in Octo­ber, and I hope to meet Oleg Tak­tarov in Novem­ber.”

Tak­tarov said that a new oppo­nent had already been found for him. It will be a for­eign­er with box­ing expe­ri­ence and also — unusu­al biog­ra­phy:

“In Octo­ber, my oppo­nent will no longer be a 52-year-old deputy, but a mem­ber of a Mex­i­can group, a box­er. He is a friend of this gang, which sold drugs on the ter­ri­to­ry of the hotel. Vlad Khryunov agreed with the help of my friend Dan­ny Tre­jo.

He knows all the ban­dits in Mex­i­co. He him­self sat there for ten years and found some ends to this sto­ry. They will send their rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the fight will take place. They sent me a pho­to, it’s clear that he’s fat, but fat eggs also shoot well. Vlad is nego­ti­at­ing with them because I can’t com­mu­ni­cate with scum.”

The fight was the result of a high-pro­file sto­ry: in Jan­u­ary 2022, Tak­tarov was attacked by a group of peo­ple on the premis­es of a hotel in Mex­i­co. As the fight­er said, he was hit from behind after he stood up for the girl, and after that about ten peo­ple beat him.

Taktarov will not fight Monson anytime soon

In August, Tak­tarov fought against Mon­son accord­ing to box­ing rules. The fight end­ed in a draw, and many crit­i­cized its lev­el — rivals who were 107 years old between them met in the ring.

For 55-year-old Tak­tarov, the fight against Mon­son was the first after a 15-year pause, when he act­ed in films and built a career in Hol­ly­wood.

“I was not ready for the fight with Mon­son,” Tak­tarov admit­ted. “It’s good that I made it through this fight and was even breath­ing well, but I wasn’t ready dynam­i­cal­ly, since I’d been train­ing for less than a month. Now I have made a qual­i­ta­tive leap in all aspects.”

Tak­tarov is known for his per­for­mances at ear­ly UFC tour­na­ments. He even won one of them in 1995, becom­ing the first belt hold­er from Rus­sia.

Tak­tarov will not fight Mon­son in the near future, despite the ten­sion that has arisen between the fight­ers. In the box­ing match, they more than once switched to wrestling tech­niques, which made revenge log­i­cal accord­ing to MMA rules.

But Tak­tarov will con­tin­ue his career in high-pro­file exhi­bi­tion fights, because he admit­ted that he had been train­ing in recent years and felt good before the fight with Mon­son.