Soccer? Violent sports hooligans in Russia

Sam Borden (ESPN, 6/03/18); Pfc. Sandoval, S.Auberon, C. Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The New Hooligans of Russia

Bare-knuckle hyper-masculinity U.S. style

They battle in the forest, soccer gang against soccer gang. They are the underground fighters the World Cup host doesn't want you to see.

Over nearly four decades on earth, while living in half a dozen cities and two countries, whether employed or not, happy or not, sober or not, I have never -- not ever -- punched someone. Have you?

Macho Dictator Vlad "KGB Spy" Putin

Vova laughs at me. Of course Vova has punched someone. Vova lives in Moscow, on the edge of Russia's capital.

He says he has been punching people for years, says he loves punching people, says it is part of his identity. He thinks I am an alien, basically, and that a man without scars on his hands is no man at all.

It's freezing! Can our brothers handle a cold Pussy Riot?

Vova is 19. By any measure, Vova has a comfortable life. His mother is a flight attendant, so his room in the family's tenement flat has pictures and posters from the places he has traveled.

He is studying to be a graphic designer, and he loves surfing. He also has an affinity for poetry (including Pushkin and Yesenin, who wrote about, among other things, hooligans in the early 1900s).

Vova enjoys literature, particularly the writings of famed German novelist Erich Maria Remarque. In a coffee shop one afternoon, we briefly debate The Night in Lisbon versus All Quiet on the Western Front. (Lisbon is his favorite book of all time.)

 

What are you homophobe idiots doing?

Yet in the evenings or on weekends, Vova says, he goes to the forest. He says he is part of a group of hooligans known as IX Legion, which supports a professional soccer team, Dinamo Moscow, and which fights against other groups supporting other teams.

These fights almost always take place in the woods, away from the eyes of the police (or anyone else, really). These fights have no written rules or regulations, have no certified referees or officials, and while it is generally considered gauche to murder someone at one of these fights, everything short of that is pretty much fine.

Pussies riot. We fight bare-knuckle in the US.

To Vova, this is glorious. To Vova, this is magical. To Vova, the idea of not punching people makes no sense, even though he knows that the Russian authorities are desperate for the upcoming World Cup to be safe and peaceful.
 

"So," I say to this teenager one evening in the center of the city, "what are you like when you're in a fight?" Vova is smart and earnest, with a fresh face, thin eyes, and a soft nose. His waist is tiny and his legs are spindly, giving him the bony look of a high school cross-country runner. "In a fight, everything is different," he says. "It requires anger, some kind of rage or something like that."

 

Leningrad is now called St. Petersburg.

It is hard to see rage from Vova, with his soft voice and innocent giggle and nervous tic in which his shoulder shakes as he thinks about a difficult question. It is hard to see rage at all. But to Vova, the rage is as much a part of him as the poetry or the textbooks in his backpack.

 

The woods, he says, is where he lets the rage out, where he immerses himself in something that "strengthens the mind."

 

American John Sullivan bare knuckling, 1900

I interrupt him. How could this possibly strengthen your mind?

 

He does not hesitate. "Well, because when you see people coming at you," he says, "not just one or two people, and you know they are about to kick you in the face and it'll be painful, you don't run away." More

• Leerla en español
• U.S. legalizes bare-knuckle boxing in 2018
• This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's June 18 World Football issue