Russia’s Red Devils Invade American Shores and Storm the Taj Mahal

Mar 11, 2004
Red Devil Sport Club
The question of who these fighters are is easy enough to answer. The Red Devil Fight Team, sponsored by the Red Devil energy drink with the “Batman-esque” red garbed devil character on the can (and it’s not bad tasting as energy drinks go). They train at the Red Devil Sports Club in St. Petersburg Russia.

The RDSC is a completely modern training facility, housing a unique decangular “mix-fight cage” (that’s right math whiz, 10 sides!) and is the only school in St. Petersburg to train professional MMA or combat sport athletes. In addition to fight training, the club also offers aerobics, body building, gymnastics, and sauna and steam room facilities.

The fight club is trained by Karate 6th Dan and Special Service Brigade trainer Andrei Siganov and Russian Special Forces officer Major Viktor Kazak, a professional trainer and author of three books on NHB training and fitness. The athletes that comprise the Red Devil Fight Team are proponents of sambo, catch wrestling, jiu-jitsu, boxing, judo and karate as well as hand-to-hand combat and Special Forces training.

Some fighters hold the rank of International Master of Sport, a title some fans may remember hearing in the UFC or during the Russian Absolute Fighting Championships from years ago. This is an actual degree and these fighters or “sportsmen” as they are sometimes called are developed on par with the soldiers that protect their country. These are not weak men. They train hard because they have to and they fight hard because they don’t know any other way to do it.

Red Devil Sports Club athletes have competed all over the world including many European Cage Fighting or “free fighting” events such as the Too Hot To Handle, Millennium Sports and It’s Showtime shows in Holland and Germany, the World Vale Tudo Championships held in Brazil and Aruba, the Heracliones Free Fight in Greece, NOTG in the Czech Republic and the Absolute Fighting Championships in Turkey and Russia.

As you might’ve expected, the team has fought mostly at home in Russia in the Pankration World Championships, BARS, the Degestan International Mix-Fight and the biggest and most respected Russian fighting event of them all; the M-1. The “M” in M-1 stands for “mix-fight” and the event has featured many of the top international fighters from across the globe.