Andrei Arlovski has accomplished a lot during his legendary career but one mistake in particular still sticks with him all these years later.
Back in 2009, Arlovski was one of the biggest free-agent signings to join the upstart Affliction promotion started by the T-shirt brand famous for outrageously expensive and flamboyant T-shirts. After knocking out Ben Rothwell in his first fight with the promotion, Arlovski got booked against former PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko in one of the most anticipated heavyweight fights of the year.
Arlovski came blazing out of the gate and caught Emelianenko with several stiff shots and some nasty leg kicks to start the fight but then he decided to throw an ill-fated flying knee that backfired. Before he could even get his knee to connect, Emelianenko blasted him with a brutal right hook that face-planted Arlovski on the canvas.
In the 16 years since that fight ended, Arlovski has always wanted another shot at Emelianenko, but despite public comments expressing interest in possibly running it back, the former UFC heavyweight champion isn’t convinced “The Last Emperor” is actually serious about it.
“The first fight, I got caught and that’s my biggest regret,” Arlovski told MMA Fighting. “But it is what it is. It’s a fact. I lost that fight. Where’s Emelianenko now? Struggling in Russia? I’m still fighting. I still do what I love to do and maybe a miracle is going to happen, and we’re going to fight again.”
One of the main reasons Arlovski held out hope that he might still get a chance at some sort of rematch was hearing Emelianenko mention his name during an interview.
That immediately got him excited but since then Arlovski says Emelianenko has fallen silent without much word about whether he was serious about facing off again.
“The reason I mentioned Emelianenko, a Russian reporter, he gave an interview and he said ‘if Arlovski’s name came up, obviously I’m not going to do MMA, but I would love to box him,’” Arlovski recounted. “So I wanted to have an answer from him but he’s quiet as f*ck. So obviously I don’t know.”
Arlovski was happy to consider a boxing match against Emelianenko because that’s a sport he’s always wanted try as well but really he’ll take that fight anyway he can get it.
“All the time, I love boxing,” Arlovski said. “Back in 2009, I was signed with Golden Boy promotions. Oscar De La Hoya signed me and gave me like $50,000 as a signing bonus. I lost a couple of fights, I was sick and he said ‘keep the bonus, we’re not interested yet.’ But I was supposed to fight [Wladimir] Klitschko back in 2009 and obviously I was supposed be the first guy to do what [Floyd] Mayweather did against [Conor] McGregor. But I can wait [for Fedor], we’ll see.”
On Saturday, Arlovski is actually making his bare-knuckle fighting debut after inking a deal to compete in BKFC and he’s even open to that possibility, although he highly doubts Emelianenko would consider it.
“Absolutely not,” Arlovski said about Emelianenko facing him in a bare-knuckle fight. “We’ll see. Maybe BKFC will do something. We’ll see.”
For now, Arlovski is staying focused on what he can control and right now his immediate future is a fight against Josh Copeland in BKFC.
With over 25 years of experience under his belt already, Arlovski is still finding new ways to surprise himself while also discovering new combat sports to experience for the first time. He did Mike Perry’s Dirty Boxing for his most recent fight and now he’s testing himself in the bare-knuckle arena.
What do those two things have in common?
“Listen, I want to make money,” Arlovski said. “It doesn’t matter Dirty Boxing or regular boxing or BKFC, it doesn’t matter. I want to make money for a couple more years and that’s it and retire from the sport.”
BKFC has exploded in popularity over the past few years and Arlovski is definitely interested in exploring future opportunities with the promotion assuming all goes well in his debut.
In fact it’s not lost on Arlovski that he actually holds two wins over current BKFC heavyweight champion Ben Rothwell and that’s a fight he would also gladly revisit as well.
“I beat him twice and I can beat him in BKFC,” Arlovski said about Rothwell. “But definitely when he won the title I congratulated him and I asked maybe we can dance in the ring. Obviously no answer but OK.
“My next move, I signed with BKFC so we’ll see what’s next. Obviously it’s not up to me, it’s up to the people in BKFC.”
