I think that Koshkin deserves a title fight more than Vartanian and other fighters. He’s riding a 4-fight winning streak, that’s why he was given the opportunity. A rematch with Vartanian doesn’t make sense - I have confidently defeated him, and in general I am more interested in fighting new contenders. Therefore, I believe that the league management has made the right choice. Of course, had they put Vartanian, I would have taken the fight with him, but I just don’t see the point in this.
Koshkin may appear bigger than me, but we are both not really small and weak guys (smiles). Let's see how ready he will be for this fight. I think the fight will not be easy, we’ll have to sweat a good deal.
I know that he is now going to ATT. There he will train with the UFC fighters and it will give him more confidence. The first trip to the United States is always very useful. But in any case, we both have well-established basic skills, and everything else builds up from there. I’m from the Caucasian school and he is from a Siberian one, so in Moscow we will rather see an already habitual confrontation of the Caucasus against Siberia, and not a clash of Los Angeles against Miami. One can say that we are preparing in as much equal conditions as possible, so in the fight we will see who has given his all to the training and who has done more to win.
