Image: Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration
“Well, you’re not hardcore (no, you’re not hardcore) unless you live hardcore (unless you live hardcore. But the legend of the rent was way hardcore!”
–Dewey Finn, “The Legend of the Rent (School of Rock)”
Pop MMA: a creation of bored oligarchs with way too much money and time at their disposal. An amalgamation of all the things you love about your favorite combat sport, only screwed up for no reason whatsoever. Those in command claim their modifications will make for a more “entertaining” viewing experience, but all it does is limit the action and made fans wonder what could have been. These leagues were all the rage in the height of the COVID years, with these organizers—typically in Eastern Europe and Russia—testing the bounds on how far they could push the sport.
Where these Pop MMA promotions go awry is when they decide to make wholesale changes to how the combat operates, and what its purpose is. Is the goal of these events to find out who is the best fighter, usually culminating with the conclusion of a tournament? Are we just staging combat to pitch some product or push some sponsors? Is this all about a reality show? In the case of the league that started as Hardcore Fighting Championships, the answer to all three of those questions was yes, and that was a problem.
The popularity of these organizations has waned as the novelty has worn off—for a slew of pop-up leagues based exclusively on being fresh and different, this is not a good thing. Some have taken to unique locales like placing a rope ring on a sandy beach, on a river barge like the video above, or even surrounded by hay bales with screaming masses mere feet away from the competitors. There is a market for it, even the open-handed defenseless striking nonsense, but it may not be a permanent one.
During COVID, Russian oligarch Anatoly Sulyanov built an organization of his own gym, tested the waters in a short-lived league called “Battle for Hype” and then built Hardcore FC from the ground up. It was split up between sport, with their bare-knuckle boxing league attached to the Hardcore name. This meant the creation of Hardcore MMA, and what came with that was a lot of paperwork. Paperwork that the Hardcore execs failed to handle properly, resulting in the Russian Ministry of Sports revoking their licenses to operate events in 2024.
A cursory glance on the Hardcore YouTube page shows that their press conferences are as popular as their actual fights, if not more so. It does not help that many of those conferences result in brawls, which is one of the major reasons that the Ministry suspended their licenses. Another incident involved a ring girl kicked by one of the fighters. Drama is what the Hardcore team would like to swim in, and it did not back down when it lost the governmental permission to hold its events.
When it rains, it pours, for Hardcore. Perhaps because its has not been able to run events for some time—the last registered MMA show took place in April—it has gone into massive debt, even not paying its fighters at times. This has given those under its banner a boost in confidence and a chip on their shoulder to speak out over their now-former employer. Sherdog spoke to a litany of individuals in the orbit of Hardcore FC, ranging from officials in the aforementioned Russian Ministry of Sports to multiple major promoters in the nation as well as over a dozen athletes who stepped into the Hardcore ring or cage. Things are not going well, and the public is turning on Hardcore in a hurry.
The clip directly above is one of their more popular videos on their channel, with over 6.5 million views since it was put up five years ago. In this “Hardconference,” two fighters matched up against one another briefly came to blows, and security had to step in. Jon Jones, Nate Diaz and others have been linked up to a notorious Russian reality show, ALF Reality, where they coach different teams in a series similar to “The Ultimate Fighter.” On that show, a notorious repeat cast member named Zelik always starts fights with anyone he squabbles with, and has put his hands on multiple former UFC fighters. It is all to hype the product, just like the fracas at Hardcore.
To control their releases schedule and put out cards on their own terms, Hardcore FC tape-delays all of its events. There are no live Hardcore shows that we have been informed of, and the league tends to push out fight cards with four to six bouts usually on the lineup. Like One Championship’s past practices of recording one large event and splitting it up to several separate cards, Hardcore does the same.
There are massive dangers to this: first and foremost, pre-taped reality shows are deemed exhibitions. This was a decision handed down decades ago by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and not something we will nudge any time soon. A pre-recorded event means that the promoter has the discretion to show or not show all of its fights. If a favored athlete ends up losing that night, but they can hide it, it would be like the match never happened. This, unfortunately, is an established—albeit rare—practice from unscrupulous managers and organizers alike.
This right here is what started this whole mess. Iskandar Ziyaev had an ardent and especially rude defender, manager Yulin Holov, who regularly reached out to Sherdog staff about his fighter’s 2022 decision loss to Azizkhan Chorshanbiev. In the span of two months, this manager has sent in upwards of two dozen emails about this one loss, swearing up and down that the organization limited grappling in that specific fight to 30 seconds on the mat. Imagine our surprise when we watched the video footage, seeing that referee Alexander Sidorin actually stood the fighters up after nearly a full minute on the mat due to strikes to the back of the head?
His requests did start up a review of Hardcore events, because the Pop MMA league did at one point implement limits to the time permitted grappling and clinching. Say you are on top locking down an arm-triangle choke, and the floor clock hits 30 seconds? The person on the mat could be losing consciousness and the fight would be stood up. Ask Zuluzinho, who had Petr Romankevich dead to rights with a mounted kimura, only for ref Oleg Milyakov to stand them up and the Brazilian to get decked with a knee. That result and a handful of others from the four events AMC Fight Nights tried to change the rules of MMA to make grappling an afterthought.
These surprise rule changes, ones that clearly favor one subset of fighters over others, can very quickly lead to malfeasance. When a league owes money all over the country and things are falling apart externally, it can seek desperate measures. In the case of Hardcore, matchmaker Artem Lobanov did just that. At the end of 2024, he was booted from Hardcore and his home raided by police for allegations of embezzlement, organizing illegal schemes, disclosure of confidential information and the big one: organization of fixed fights. Lobanov is still on trial, and he has been banned from social media until it is resolved.
We at Sherdog know that it is a massive step to take action against an entire organization, especially one that has run hundreds of fights over the course of several years. We do not make our decisions lightly, and credit our Fight Finder staff for the impressive, thorough investigation ran into this league and its surrounding associates. Hardcore FC has an exceptionally low reputation among legitimate MMA promoters around the industry, with some positing that it is more of “the level of a talk show” than professional MMA.
Another manager had this to say, “Hardcore FC fights are broadcast after the events [are recorded] with high-quality video editing, and the results of the fights raise questions. Hardcore FC cultivates dirt, hyper, scandals, fights, unsportsmanlike behavior and promoting [non-athletes, and instead] some scum from the street. All this has nothing to do with sports. The prevailing opinion among professionals and people interested in MMA [is]: ‘If Hardcore FC with their dirt closes, thank God!’”
With many legitimate allegations of fight fixing, their strategy of only tape-delaying events and choosing which fights to display—in fairness, Hardcore could be airing all of its matches, but we have no way of knowing given that taping takes place behind closed doors. We have no individual records to correct, but rather will be adjusting all Hardcore matches—tournament and otherwise—to exhibitions in line with what the organization is more suited to be. Some posited that Hardcore is closer to pro wrestling than MMA, and that is the determination that we also must make. Others view it is as a “disgrace to the sport.” What it will not be, however, is marked as professional any longer on our database.
If you are a member of the Hardcore FC team and seek to find a path back to legitimacy, we suggest the following: Change your internal policies. Publish your bout information and fight posters for your individual events ahead of time. Provide your videos to the record keepers shortly after they happen, without editing. Also, it would be in your best interest to allow spectators again. The more transparency, the better. Finally, stop fixing fights, and pay your debts. Should you do all this, reach out to fightfinder@sherdog.com.