The Honorary President of the Russian MMA Union, Fedor Emelianenko, explained in an interview with Sport-Express why he decided to sue AST Publishing House and writer Anastasia Ivanova over the book MMA Legend — Fedor Emelianenko.
“There’s nothing but lies in there,” Emelianenko told reporters at a master class in Mozhaisk. “Nothing but lies, first of all. Secondly, none of it was agreed with me in any way. Thirdly, AST is now trying to defend itself, offering some kind of handouts like, ‘That’s enough for you, the book is already running at a loss for us,’ and so on. The whole book is a lie.
“Take the most basic thing. It says that I was, God forgive me, a dummy, that I didn’t study, and that only sports later… That my brother and I wore the same sweater… As I understand it, the book describes [my life] up to fourth grade. When I started school, I was seven years old, and Alexander was two. If there’s a five-year age difference between us, there’s no way we could have had one sweater and no way we could have worn the same sweater. And the whole book is just full of this kind of nonsense. That’s why we’re suing them now.”
— Did the author of the book try to contact you before publication to clarify the facts of your biography?
“Not me personally, no.”
— They offered you 500,000 rubles, while you’re demanding 13 million. Are you going to see this through to the end?
“Of course, to the end. Why do we need these handouts? Let them not act like this, let them not do this. This is quite a large publishing house; they shouldn’t be making mistakes like this. They’ve also published books by the same author about Dmitry Bivol, Maria Sharapova, and Sasha Ovechkin. I’m sure neither the author nor the publishing house coordinated this with any of them.
— I heard that they wrote the one about Bivol together…
“I don’t know. They didn’t with me.”
— And what about the claim that the book is intended to motivate children to take up sports…
“By what? What is it supposed to motivate them with? By saying that Fedor Emelianenko was some nobody? Why lie? Why lie about me? That’s not motivation. The book was being sold, after all. There’s a commercial component to it.
— Would you have liked a book like this — specifically for children — to be written with you, coordinating it with you and working alongside you throughout the writing process?
“If we worked side by side, then we could consider something like that. But when they got, excuse me, grabbed by the throat, they came running. And started offering handouts — ‘Take 100, take 200, that’s enough, the book is running at a loss for us,’ and so on. My lawyers are handling the discussions. So, guys… If they get properly punished once, twice, three times, then incidents like this will stop happening.
