Fedor Emelianenko is taking his complaint about a children’s book into court, and he wants everyone to know just how seriously he’s treating the matter.
Emelianenko has filed suit against AST Publishing House and author Anastasia Ivanova over “MMA Legend – Fedor Emelianenko,” a biography aimed at young readers that he says distorts his early life beyond recognition. Speaking with reporters, he didn’t soften his assessment of the project.
“There’s nothing but lies in there,” Emelianenko said. “Nothing but lies, first of all. Secondly, none of it was agreed with me in any way. Thirdly, AST is now trying to defend itself, offering some kind of handouts like, ‘That’s enough for you, the book is already running at a loss for us,’ and so on. The whole book is a lie.”
The dispute centers on details from his childhood, specifically passages covering the period up through fourth grade. According to Emelianenko, the book paints him as an indifferent student who only found direction through athletics later on, a portrayal he flatly rejects.
He also flagged a smaller but telling inconsistency involving his brother Alexander that he says exposes how little research went into the manuscript.
“Take the most basic thing. It says that I was, God forgive me, a dummy, that I didn’t study, and that only sports later… That my brother and I wore the same sweater… As I understand it, the book describes my life up to fourth grade. When I started school, I was seven years old, and Alexander was two. If there’s a five-year age difference between us, there’s no way we could have had one sweater and no way we could have worn the same sweater. And the whole book is just full of this kind of nonsense. That’s why we’re suing them now.”
Asked whether Ivanova reached out to him ahead of publication to check any of these details, his answer was short.
“Not me personally, no.”
The financial gap between the two sides is wide. AST reportedly offered 500,000 rubles to settle the matter quietly, while Emelianenko is pursuing 13 million rubles in damages, a figure he says reflects the principle at stake rather than a willingness to negotiate down.
“Of course, to the end,” he said when asked whether he intends to pursue the case fully. “Why do we need these handouts? Let them not act like this, let them not do this. This is quite a large publishing house; they shouldn’t be making mistakes like this. They’ve also published books by the same author about Dmitry Bivol, Maria Sharapova, and Sasha Ovechkin. I’m sure neither the author nor the publishing house coordinated this with any of them.”
When a reporter mentioned hearing that the Bivol book had at least been a collaborative effort with its subject, Emelianenko said he couldn’t speak to that case.
“I don’t know. They didn’t with me.”
He also pushed back on the notion that a few embellished or invented details could be justified as harmless motivational storytelling for children, arguing that framing him as unaccomplished before his athletic career took shape does the opposite of inspire.
“By what? What is it supposed to motivate them with? By saying that Fedor Emelianenko was some nobody? Why lie? Why lie about me? That’s not motivation. The book was being sold, after all. There’s a commercial component to it.”
Despite the anger behind the lawsuit, Emelianenko left room for the idea of an authorized version down the road, one built with his direct input from the start rather than assembled without his knowledge and corrected only after the fact.
“If we worked side by side, then we could consider something like that. But when they got, excuse me, grabbed by the throat, they came running. And started offering handouts: ‘Take 100, take 200, that’s enough, the book is running at a loss for us,’ and so on. My lawyers are handling the discussions. So, guys, if they get properly punished once, twice, three times, then incidents like this will stop happening.”
For now, the matter sits with his legal team, with Emelianenko making clear he sees the case as bigger than a single disputed paragraph about a shared sweater. As he tells it, it’s about publishers doing the basic work of checking their facts before putting someone’s name and childhood on a cover.
