NAMES IN THE GAME: WEC'S ALEX SERDYUKOV

By Mick Hammond

Under its new Zuffa ownership, World Extreme Cagefighting has begun to stockpile some of the best young talent in MMA and become a true developmental proving ground for the sports’ next solid hopefuls.

Among that group, which will be on display this Saturday at The Joint in the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, will be Alex Serdyukov.

Serdyukov, a Siberian immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for 10 years, has previously competed in the WEC and now hopes to begin to take the next step in his young career towards a possible title shot in the promotion’s stacked 170-pound weight class.

To get there though, Alex must first go up against undefeated wrestling standout Scott Norton on Saturday and prove he deserves to be among the top WEC welterweights.

Shortly after arriving in Las Vegas, Serdyukov spoke to MMAWeekly to discuss his background, his fight against Norton, and where he’d like to see himself in the future.

MMAWeekly: First off Alex, for the fans that might not be familiar with you, tell us how you got into MMA.

Alex Serdyukov: I’ve been training since 2000. I started training with [UFC/PRIDE veteran] Fabiano Iha back in the day. Chris Brennan had a school nearby, so when Fabiano was only teaching two times a week I started training with Chris Brennan. Just training Jiu-Jitsu, I hadn’t done anything [else] before that, no wrestling or anything. I did some [grappling] tournaments and did good in them, so I was invited to the fight team.

From there it just took off. Then Jeremy Williams, one of Chris’ students, and I went with him. He’s been my coach for the past four to five years. About a year ago I moved up to San Francisco where I train at Fairtex with Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez, and Cesar Gracie’s guys and sometimes AKA [American Kickboxing Academy] guys.

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