Preparing for St. Nicholas Day? It’s going very well, I’ll end it worst in the third round, says Meliš

The Oktagon 29 tournament in Ostrava will feature a long-awaited match. In the battle of two former friends, Tomas Meliš will face Vaclav Mikulasek. Meliš, who is better known to the public as Bolo, spoke about this fight in an interview with Ruik.

You recently changed your surname. What led you to this change?

I wanted to do it a long time ago, when I was 18 years old. My mother divorced her husband, with whom she had 3 children, my siblings, but her surname remained Bolo. I am an illegitimate child, so the registry office automatically gave me my mother’s surname, even though my father was listed as Meliš on my birth certificate.

When I was 18, I wanted to change my surname, but I needed my father’s affidavit to do so. I believe he would have given it to me, but I didn’t want to cause him unnecessary strife at home, he has a wife and three children at home.

I let it go and recently changed my permanent residence and it happens to be at the office on the same floor. Out of curiosity I went to enquire and found out that I no longer needed the affidavit, just the application and a few papers. So I changed it and I’m now named after my biological father.

MMA is growing in domestic waters. Can you make a living in this sport anymore, or since when?

MMA is still growing, you can even feel it in the sense that you can earn some money by doing it, but not everyone has such a salary that it will provide them for half a year or a year. You can make a living as a coach, certainly more as a wrestler, at least in my case.

Outside of your career as an MMA fighter, you also train at your Wolf Pride Gym. So do you want to focus on training after your career?

Yes, I do coach and referee. I find everything about MMA very fun and fulfilling, I really enjoy doing it and I enjoy being able to do what I enjoy. The coaching profession is not a job, it’s a mission.

You have had one big success in your career, and that is a title in the TFN organization. Why didn’t you end up defending the title?

I still hold the TFN belt. I was supposed to have a defense, but my opponent ended up in the hospital after the weigh-ins, so I’m still the champion. There will definitely come a time when I need to defend that position and I will be ready.

Do you believe that you will ever repeat the feeling of winning a title, for example in a lower weight class?

I’m happy with every win, every success. You never know, it could always be the last one, so I enjoy them equally.

The RFA organization has been a lot of talk in the last few weeks. Did you get an offer from them?

I think everybody’s got an offer. I’ve already got a fight with Mikulas, so that’s my goal at the moment. We’ll see what happens after that.

Your next opponent is Vaclav Mikulasek, who you will face in Ostrava on December 4. But you used to be friends, why did it change?

It changed as soon as I told Vasek that I have no problem to play against him. It’s a sport and if he can choose, let him take me. Sooner or later it would have happened anyway, but he took it the way he took it, on his own terms…

Mikulášek called you “a ball of piss” in one of his interviews. You’ve spoken out against doping in the past. What do you think of his words?

If it comes to doping or any other tests, I won’t be the one who will be worried about the result. I’ve been to doping tests before when there was no corona, I’ve fought abroad a lot and in some countries they test you after a fight, which would be nice if it was introduced here. It would be very entertaining to see how that selection of wrestlers would narrow down.

How is the preparation for Mikulášek going so far? What weight are you at at this stage of your preparation?

It’s going very well, I’m travelling a lot and I think I’m training with the best. Kincl, Muradov, Hron, the camp in Ankos, Poland, where there are fighters from UFC, ACA and KSW. It’s all great, avoiding sickness and injury is a priority because I honestly haven’t stepped into a fight with no sickness or injury.

Last but not least, how do you predict the outcome of a match?

I see the outcome of the fight being that I will finish Mikulášek in the second or at worst the third round!