The Bellator champion gave the coach an apartment and goes on a 27-0 record. He is already called the Ukrainian Khabib

He fought a lot in Russia and was inspired by Emelianenko.

Ukrainian Yaroslav Amosov is the reigning Bellator welterweight champion with one of the longest winning streaks in MMA (26-0). After moving to Bellator in 2018, he won seven out of seven fights, and in June 2021 he won the championship belt.

Now, a year and a half later, he will make his first defense against Logan Storley, whom he has already defeated. In March 2022, Amosov withdrew from the title against Michael Page due to the fighting in Ukraine. Then Bellator held a fight between Storley and Page for a temporary belt.

What is important to know about Yaroslav Amosov?

He gave the coach an apartment and grew up in a city where drug addiction is common

Yaroslav Amosov was born in Irpen. His parents divorced when he was a child. At the age of 15, Amosov got into the Kiev sports club “Hermes”, where his stepfather brought him: “I began to study the specifics of MMA in depth, to be interested in Western stars, and Fedor Emelianenko seemed to me generally unattainable value.”

The main goal of joining the sport is to change the vector against the backdrop of drug addiction common in the city. “I was 14-15 years old, but I understood that I was already on the wrong track,” Amosov recalled. – Could hang out at a brothel with older boys. To constantly be like this – no, but I saw some moments.

He was strongly influenced by his uncle, who lived in the center of Irpin: “Everything went well in his life: I saw his friends, who then seemed to me not super-authorities. There have always been boys in the area: someone has a criminal record, someone has a credible authority.

You look at them as a teenager: “Damn, they respect so-and-so.” Now I understand that this is pure bullshit. Then I saw that my uncle is not some kind of authority, but everything is fine in his life: there are some girls with him, they went to McDonald’s – for me it was fucking bad. I saw that there is another life.

After winning the Combat Sambo World Cup in Yalta, Amosov gave the won apartment to the coach: “At the age of 20, when I won such a prize for the first time, I decided that I would give the apartment to the coach, Fedor Seredyuk, he has a large family, and he needs it more. He wouldn’t take it from me alone. Then, at the training session, already in the club with the guys, they announced the apartment to the coach, we all had to persuade her to take it together, and it was not easy.

The main reference point at the start of a career is Fedor Emelianenko. When Amosov first came to MMA, he watched his fights on YouTube. After – several times I came to Stary Oskol, where fighters from the Fedor Team train. He worked  with Anatoly Tokov and competed in races with Vadim Nemkov:

“There are not very many guys there, which is probably why they help each other and treat those who come well. I like the way they treat me there, I’m glad to see everyone. At the same Bellator tournament where I played, there were Viktor Nemkov and Valentin Moldavsky, I was glad to see them.”

Before appearing in Bellator, Amosov fought a lot in Russia and Ukraine (14 out of 19 fights took place in Kyiv and Krasnodar, there were performances in Novosibirsk, Anapa and St. Petersburg). The last fight before moving to Bellator took place in Krasnodar. In 2020, Amosov spoke about a possible fight against the Russian Andrey Koreshkov:

“Honestly, I don’t know how he is with fights, but this is the only fighter that I would not want to meet. We know each other in absentia, and I didn’t sign up for an American promotion to fight Russian boys. The last thing I would want to do is fight him. I read somewhere that he is of the same opinion. If it’s going to be a title or a Candidates fight, then it’s possible, otherwise I don’t see the point.”