Soviet Special Forces (SSO) veteran and founder of the veterans' league M13 FIGHTS, Artem Grot, publicly clarified a key principle of his project: only military personnel and veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war are admitted to the tournaments. In his words, this is not a formal restriction but a fundamental feature of the format that sets M13 FIGHTS apart from classic sporting events, where civilian athletes step into the ring or octagon. Grot insists that for a person with combat experience, it only makes sense to compete against someone who has walked the same path.
A format designed exclusively for soldiers and veterans
As Grot explained, a soldier who has gained combat experience, sustained injuries, and endured the loss of friends objectively cannot comfortably spar or compete against someone who has not been through all of that. “A soldier who gains combat experience, sustains injuries, and loses his friends — after that it is hard to spar or compete against a person who has not been through it,” noted the league's founder. In his belief, M13 FIGHTS creates an environment in which all participants have walked a similar path and, by virtue of that, understand each other without unnecessary explanations.
Why civilians have no place in the ring
Grot's central argument is built on the idea of equality between opponents. “He is most comfortable fighting an equal and losing to an equal, not to a civilian,” emphasized the SSO veteran. Thus, in his logic, the ban on civilian participation protects the fighters themselves from psychological discomfort and from the feeling of an unfair clash with a person who lacks comparable combat and life experience. By the founder's design, the league functions as a closed community of like-minded people rather than an open sports organization.
Channeling aggression and the sporting resolution of conflicts
Grot placed a separate emphasis on the psychological function of the tournaments: the competitions allow the safe channeling of accumulated emotions and aggression that inevitably build up in people who have been through combat operations. Moreover, the league's founder directly links the project to preventing real conflicts within military units. “If a conflict between your own people goes beyond words — settle it with bare fists in our league or one-on-one in your units, but without weapons,” he summed up, insisting that any disputes between soldiers must be resolved exclusively through sport, not with weapons.
Unconventional venues: from a barge in the middle of the Dnipro to an airship
Beyond the ideological justification of the format, M13 FIGHTS also stands out for its choice of venues. The league previously held a tournament on a barge in the middle of the Dnipro — with the participation of veterans, ten bouts, and a ceremony in which the winner was handed a golden AK-47. In Khmelnytskyi, according to media reports, the league opened its season with a bare-knuckle boxing tournament between soldiers. At the same time, Grot does not rule out even more unusual scenarios — including holding fights on an airship, which points to the organizers' drive to push the format beyond the boundaries of conventional sports arenas.
Thus, Artem Grot's position boils down to the fact that M13 FIGHTS is not merely a sporting event, but a specialized environment for soldiers and veterans, in which equality of combat experience, psychological safety, and the sporting resolution of conflicts are the main conditions of participation.
