November 1, 1997, St. Petersburg, Jubilee Sports Palace, overcrowded with spectators who gathered to watch the outlandish spectacle. Then the rules were not really worked out and the audience saw in those battles almost the entire arsenal of all kinds of tricks and techniques - from climbing onto the cage to hitting the head and elbows in the back of the head. Some of the fighters fought with their bare hands twenty years before it became a hype phenomenon. An almost complete absence of rules, brave fighters and tough fights - this is what MMA was in the dashing nineties.
Today you will have a semi-final bout in the Grand Prix in the weight category up to 76 kg and the first to enter the cage was the European champion in full contact karate, Dutchman Rodney Faverus, nicknamed "Mayhem", who had black belts in Kyokushin and taekwando.
His rival was the St. Petersburg sambo wrestler Sergei Bychkov, the future legend of mixed martial arts, who, with his brutal battles in the next decade, will earn the military nickname "Flint Man".