Seven-time world champion in Thai boxing, Belarusian Aleksey Kudin at the M-1 Challenge 58 Battle in the Mountains returned to the M-1 rage for the first time since 2013, when he lost by TKO in the second round to Sergey Kharitonov at M-1 Challenge 43. In 2014, he had two fights under the banner of ProFC and the MMA Union of Russia, knocking out German Andreas Craniotakes and American Travis Fulton in the first rounds. In the same year, he managed to score a duel against Alexander Volkov, to whom he lost by unanimous decision after three rounds at the tournament in Krasnodar, but during the fight he managed to deliver certain problems to the ex-Bellator heavyweight champion.
Initially, he was supposed to fight against Denis Smoldarev. To our great regret, right on the eve of the tournament Denis got a tear on the back of his thigh during training. A number of proposals were immediately made to various heavyweight fighters and two days before the fight agreed to replace the most experienced veteran of Russian MMA - Baga Agayev. His career then was no longer booming, but victories over such fighters as Maxim Grishin, Kostya Glukhov, Magomed Malikov and Kevin Randallman speaks of the great experience and skill of this fighter, and there is no need to talk about his courage, the fact that he agreed going out two days before the fight against Alexei Kudin is already a feat in itself.