No one noticed until the tournament, but it was simply impossible to hide it in the cage. National MMA fighter Oleg Serdyuk not only lost a unanimous points decision in a three-round battle with Hungarian Gergely Csibi, but most of all he earned criticism for the problematic Nazi tattoo on his body. He had the infamous Iron Cross depicted on his left leg and on the other, for a change, the emblem of the Azov Regiment.
To make matters worse, up until the fight, the young fighter had the numbers “88” behind his nickname on his Instagram, representing the “Heil Hitler” salute. Serdyuk took action after the criticism, renaming his Instagram account and briefly commenting on the whole situation on his social networks.
“Every person can make mistakes. It is important how they approach them. I recognize the mistake and approach them in such a way that they have everything done again, because this is my stupidity from the past. I don’t sign up for anything and just want to focus on sports. To perform well,” wrote the champion of the Czech Republic in MMA.
It also had consequences for the aforementioned RFA organization, which underestimated this excess and only became aware of the situation itself during the match. “What happened is the kid grabbed it last minute basically the day before the game. With that, he pulled a thorn out of our heel, because his he opponent would have lost the match and the whole preparation,” matchmaker Martin Woodecki said.
“At the moment he has a stopwatch, his participation in other tournaments is not on the agenda,” the promoter of the organization Boris Marhanský confirmed to Sport.cz. The coach called us and apologized for it. I also spoke to Oleg who also apologized and explained that it is a matter of the past and he will have it removed. We want to distance ourselves from these things.”
At the same time, it hasn’t been too long since the domestic scene has experienced a very similar glut. An avalanche of criticism poured over the Brno wounded Radek Roušal, who had an effigy of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on his right hand and probably an SS officer’s cap on his chest. The Oktagon MMA organization only noticed this during the weigh-ins, the day before the tournament, and at the last minute removed it from the match list.
Roušal later justified everything by saying that he grew up in a troubled community of people, didn’t know what to do with life and at the same time admitted that tattoos were stupid. In the following months he had his tattoo redone and nothing prevented him from participating in other tournaments of the Oktagon MMA organization.
