I just stumbled across this clip featuring Paul Varelans aka "The Polar Bear" talking about his fight with Vovchanchyn: This content is protected Here's the actual fight in question: This content is protected
Igor was amazing, I didn’t watch prime Mike Tyson, but when people describe it, I feel like it is the same feeling I had when a Igor fight was coming up.
Crap, I thought Igor had passed away from the title of the thread. Glad to hear he's still alive and well. He was one of my favourite fighters from early Pride days. Loved his aggressive standup and wild OH right. His barefist cagefights in Brazil were even more brutal. He would brutalise his opponents. He was a bit like Sakuraba though. Undersized versus most of his opponents.
He was one of the most downright violent and intimidating dudes in MMA in the 90s in terms of doing scary highlight reel **** to people.
The whole 1990s Japanese/Russian Brazilian value tudo NHB scene was a dream fight era. The one night 8 man tournaments built stars overnight and Igor won the 32 man Absolute Fighting Championship by winning 5 fights. He had exactly the aura of 85-89 tyson. That era culminated in the legendary Pride 2000 Grand Prix. After 2001 he declined mainly against top tier HW's but one of the 3 best mma fighters in the world open class when he was only 5ft 6 and 200 lbs...
