Avangard player Belov condemned the mass brawl after the starting throw-in in the match against Sochi

Avangard defender Anton Belov condemned the mass brawl of hockey players in the pre-season tournament match against Sochi (6:4).

The fight happened right after the kick-off.

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– Avangard – Sochi match. Starting throw. Mass fight. There is a lot of controversy around this performance. Some are horrified, some are happy. Did you have fun?

“Honestly, it was a little unexpected. Although 10 years ago I participated in a team-to-team fight against Vityaz. Then they jumped on our gamers. For me, these situations are not new. But I didn’t expect that in preseason. The main thing is that the fans showed their attitude: in Sochi, the entire arena shouted “Vanguard! Vanguard! My attitude to this is that this is a pre-season tournament. Nobody needs this here. You can get injured and ruin the whole season. It’s nonsense. It’s one thing when in a season they collided on a penny, word for word and away we go. And here … I’m not very positive about such things. I know there were a lot of Sirius kids in the stands. What will we teach them? It’s better to see how Volodya Tkachev and Bush played the most famously. Beauty is. You can look at this. Kids go to hockey, not MMA. Slightly different sports, don’t you think?

I watched a replay of the first fight. You were more trying to negotiate than to fight.

– It turned out that three people were hanging on Shevchenko. I had to turn on to unload this pile. If necessary, we can all do it, but in general, fights are not my favorite pastime. Our team has shown itself well, rallied. I think it will help us in the future. The guys from Sochi drove up to me a couple of times and said, “I’m sorry for everything that happens, but you yourself understand everything.” They were embarrassed,” Belov told Sport 24.

Belov, 36, is a world champion with the Russian national team and a two-time Gagarin Cup winner (2015 and 2017) with SKA.