Oleg Taktarov burst onto the mixed martial arts world in 1995 at UFC 5: The Return of the Beast. A former combat instructor for the KGB, "The Russian Bear" was the first man to show the MMA world the toughness that has come to define fighters from his home country.
With incredible heart and determination, he seemed totally immune to fear or pain in legendary matches against Dan Severn, Tank Abbott, Ken Shamrock and Marco Ruas. But for Taktarov, fighting was a stepping stone towards a career as a movie star. Three years after capturing the UFC championship belt, he left MMA to pursue his dream in Hollywood. Amazingly, he found just as much success on movie sets as he once did in the octagon. Now, after appearing in films like 15 Minutes, National Treasure and the forthcoming movie Righteous Kill with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, Taktarov is returning to mixed martial arts again with his heart set on reaching new heights of success in the sport where he first found fame.
When you first came to America, you said you wanted to win the UFC belt and then become a movie star. Now you've done both. That is amazing.
It's a great success story. It was incredible to get the championship belt. I expected to get it right away because I never lost any fights in Russia, but it took me six months.
How did you get into fighting in Russia?
The first time I got into a fight in the streets of Russia, I was probably 13 years old. The leaders of a Russian gang were about to beat my friend. Something happened inside my mind and I jumped in and punched one guy and punched another. And they were on the floor, and they couldn’t get up. After this, my brother called me and said he got attacked by some guy in the city where he was living. I was 23 and a businessman, and I never thought I would come back to sports ever again. Anyway, I came to help, and I didn't do very well. We met outside a big bar, and there were a lot of people watching. It was disgusting for me. I was a little chubby, a little fat. It was shameful. So I decided to continue training, and that is how I got into the first Russian jiu-jitsu championship, and I won. That got me into not only sambo and judo fights, but also pretty much no-rules fighting. After that, I won the Eurasian jiu-jitsu championship, which was full contact, not like Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Then I beat everybody at the first Russian completely no-rules championship in Latvia. It took me about eight minutes to beat three opponents.
The fight with Dan Severn was stopped because of a cut, and I was actually very upset. I wanted to get a rematch right there after the fight. I looked at fighting as a step towards a movie career, but after the stoppage of that fight, I became 100 percent a fighter. There was nothing I was thinking about more seriously than fighting. In some time, after I felt that I'd accomplished something, I began thinking about the movie career again. I was getting offers every month to fight, but I felt I had accomplished something as a fighter and I hadn’t accomplished anything in the movie business.
I remember seeing you in 15 minutes with Edward Burns. You did a death scene that was really funny.
For me, that was my first movie. Everything I did before I considered training for this movie. That scene was an improvisation. Ed Burns and I were having a conversation about how to make the scene funny and one idea was, "Hey, what if I don't die for real, and I’m just doing a choreographed death scene." We spoke with the director, and he liked it and so did the executive from the New Line studio. So they said, "Let's change the script." My character was supposed to die somewhere in the middle, so 90 percent of the film is straight improvisation. It was scripted after. I would do a take, and they would film it. And then they would put in the script of what I would say.
That's crazy.
Then I did Rollerball and Bad Boys 2, and then there was the movie National Treasure, which really got me depressed because I'd been working on the movie for six months, and then the director called me in Russia and said, "Hey Oleg, I'm sorry. I was trying to fight for you, but we really need to cut a lot of stuff out of the picture because you're supposed to be a bad guy, and they think you are too likeable to watch." When I went to the premiere, I could barely find myself. I thought, "Where are all the sentences where the whole crew laughed all day?" And I told myself, "I'm going to go to Russia and do what makes me happy." I got a TV series that became No. 1 on Russian television and I did several movies in Russia, and then I came back to America to do two more movies. We Own the Night was with Joaquin Phoenix and then Rockaway in a neighborhood here in New York. You can find the trailer for that on YouTube. Then I did one called Righteous Kill with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. I'm one of the lead bad guys in the movie. It was so cool to work with those guys. Al Pacino would come back on the set wearing different clothes so nobody could recognize him. He was pleased to find out that I knew every line to the movie Scarface, and I told him that there are a lot of MMA fighters who can do the same, like Bas Rutten. It was really cool. The first time we talked, Robert DeNiro remembered the name of my kids and my wife. They are the greatest guys on the set.
So why have you decided to come back to mixed martial arts?
I did a movie called Montana. It's half-English and half-Russian. I've seen it, and I'm very happy with it. I feel like I've accomplished something as an actor so I can take a break from films. Bodog Fight is huge in Russia. The Russian president was at the last championship and the Italian president and all the stars. Now, Bodog Fight has decided to throw another championship in Moscow which means the whole media is going to be concentrated on the fight. When I got the offer I thought, "Hey man, if I don't do this now, I'm not sure if I'll ever do this." I thought it would be a great move for me as a fighter. Ten years ago, I couldn't go into a bar in America. People would be around me asking for autographs and photos and other things. In Russia, people didn’t know anything about me. Only after I started making movies, I got popularity close to what I had in America after my fights. I was in Russia for a week some months ago and countless newspapers asked to interview me and appear in different shows. It was great. The future of mixed martial arts in Russia will be set after this fight.
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Flashing Blade
