The heavyweight recently posted a video of Kadyrov’s 12-year-old son sparring with him.
Alexander Emelianenko — a convicted rapist and the brother of legendary heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko — is currently keeping himself busy by training Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov’s 12year-old son in MMA.
Emelianenko, who has spent the last few years living part-time in Chechnya and cultivating a strange friendship with Kadyrov, posted a video on social media of him training Kadyrov’s son, Adam. The video showed each of them wearing a pair of boxing gloves and sparring for the camera.
Emelianenko is not the only notable fighter to train Kadyrov’s children over the past few years. Former UFC light-heavyweight Abdul-Kerim Edilov also moonlights as a babysitter and coach for all of Kadyrov’s children. And yet, it now appears that Emelianenko has also taken up the mantle of training the underage children.
Back in October 2016, Kadyrov hosted an MMA event to celebrate his 40th birthday and was heavily criticized for assigning fights to his three sons, of whom the oldest at the time was 11 years old and weighed 37 kilograms. The children worse no rash guards, no padding, nor protective headgear and were coached by Edilov at the time. All three of Kaydrov’s sons won their fights and were awarded miniaturized championship belts for their efforts.
In the immediate aftermath of the World Fight Championships of Akhmat Grand Prix tournament, Russian media outlets reported the incident with a tone of confused disgust. The news prompted popular figures like Fedor Emelianenko, legendary Russian heavyweight and president of the Russian MMA Union, to condemn the seemingly illegal activity. In a social media post, Fedor explained that “what happened in Grozny is unacceptable & cannot be justified.”
Four years removed from that memorable incident, Kadyrov continues to allow his children to compete in non-sanctioned bouts. Adam Kadyrov, who was eight years old when he competed in his father’s MMA events, has since competed four times in boxing matches, most recently knocking out an opponent from Uganda with a liver-shot at the Time of Legends tournament in Moscow.