What do Vladimir Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump have in common?
All four men love MMA.
Several times, the master of the Kremlin appeared in the company of Fedor Emelianenko, national legend of “mixed martial arts”.
The former tenant of the White House is a regular at UFC events, the largest global league in this combat sport, where his arrivals at the fights are always thunderous.
Bolsonaro has regularly been photographed surrounded by fighters.
In Chechnya, the relations between the Moscow crony and MMA practitioners no longer need to be proven: in December 2022, Kamaru Usman and Henry Cejudo were seen training to fire a rocket launcher at the dictator's home.
The integration of this martial art, invented in the 90s in the United States, with the soft power of these political leaders is not trivial.
The worker and the soldier, archetypes of virility built over the centuries, are obsolete figures.
Today, the…
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