5 really weird PRIDE FC fights

#4 Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Aliev Makhmud – PRIDE 29 – 02/20/05

It's hard to decipher Makhmud’s strategy in this fight

PRIDE 29 was a show filled top-to-bottom with fun squash matches, basically the kind of stuff that PRIDE did best. This fight, unfortunately, was not one of them. A weird addition to a card that was mainly filled with legitimate contenders and rising stars.

Tamura, who was massively famous in Japan for his career as a pro-wrestler and also in the defunct RINGS promotion, was a legit fighter for the most part, although by the time he came to PRIDE his best days were clearly behind him.

As far as I know he was always angling for a fight with Kazushi Sakuraba, but instead he’d lost three of his first four PRIDE fights to Wanderlei Silva, Bob Sapp and Hidehiko Yoshida – and had only picked up wins over pro-wrestler Nobuhiko Takada and kickboxer Rony Sefo. He was then matched with newcomer Aliev Makhmud at PRIDE 29.

Who, you might ask? PRIDE and MMA fans were equally baffled by the signing of Makhmud, a wrestler from Azerbaijan who was apparently representing amateur wrestling governing body FILA. He was making his MMA debut, which I suppose wasn’t too odd for PRIDE at the time. Built like a tank, Makhmud looked like he meant business at least.

That didn’t exactly turn out to be the case. After bull-rushing into a clinch, Makhmud then decided to use the most bizarre fighting tactic I’ve ever seen in MMA, leaping forward towards Tamura without throwing any offence, basically jumping right into Tamura’s kicks and knees. I guess the plan was to set up takedowns? Who knows really.

Eventually, some would say inevitably, one of Tamura’s kicks landed to the groin, and things got REALLY odd from there.

Rather than take the logical route of having a doctor check poor Makhmud over, the PRIDE officials decided the best course of action would be to allow his corner to apply ice on his crotch. And then FAN his crotch with the Azerbaijani flag. Really. This ended up taking what felt like an hour but was probably around five minutes or so.

Eventually, the fighters restarted and having seemingly learned nothing, Makhmud leapt forward again right away, this time landing a left hand. Tamura fired back with some kicks, and rather than respond, Makhmud, decided to wildly wave at the referee, for reasons only known to him.

The referee seemed as equally bemused as everyone else and only became more confused when Makhmud threw a Jean-Claude Van Damme style spin kick with terrible form, almost tumbling through the ropes in the process. That was enough to baffle even Tamura, who threw a glancing combo that caused Makhmud to grasp his crotch again and gesture wildly at the referee again.

Finally after some more waving, causing Tamura to back off, Makhmud’s corner threw the towel in, ending the whole bizarre deal.

Honestly, I can’t even provide an explanation for this one. I don’t know what Makhmud’s gameplan was, why he kept waving and grabbing his crotch, nor why he was fighting in MMA really. Just check it out on Fight Pass and FEEL THE CONFUSION.