MOSCOW: Opponents of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday hailed an unprecedented show of public protest after the Russian strongman was loudly booed by the crowd at a no-holds-barred fight night.
Putin faced whistles and boos on live television as he congratulated a Russian champion in the fighting -- a sport in which the tough guy premier has always shown great interest -- after his victory over an American.
He climbed into the ring on Sunday evening after the blood-spattered bout between Russian heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and Jeff Monson, but the start of his speech was drowned out by boos and whistles.
Viewers uploaded the television footage to YouTube, where it had been viewed more than 700,000 times on Monday afternoon.
Putin hugs Emelianenko and launches into a speech, but appears to pause as the crowd greets his opening line with whistles and low-pitched booing. They only break into cheers when he praises Emelianenko as a "real Russian hero".
The speech was a rare public relations failure for the premier, whose television appearances are usually tightly stage-managed, although opinions varied on Monday as to whether the boos were specifically directed at Putin.
The top news show on Channel One, later tightly edited the speech, showing only the one phrase that provoked a cheer.
Blogger Alexei Navalny, famed for exposing corruption, posted the video on his site, saying it was "the end of an era".
"The premier was whistled in time-honoured tradition," Alexander Averin of The Other Russia wrote on the opposition movement's website. "People are already sick of Putin, just sick of him."
But the director of the Olimpiisky stadium which hosted the fight, Mikhail Moskalyov, told Vesti FM radio that the audience were jeering the American fighter as he left the ring.
The audience was "whistling Monson, who, strictly speaking, behaved incorrectly towards the fight and his opponent," Moskalyov said.
But that version was questioned by opposition blogger Oleg Kozyrev, who wrote on Twitter that "people don't whistle badly battered opponents. They whistle politicians they are highly sick of."
Some 22,000 people watched the fight, Russian television reported, among them the Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
The spokeswoman for pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, Kristina Potupchik, wrote in a blog entry that she witnessed Putin get an enthusiastic reception, however.
"Has everyone gone mad? I was at Olimpiisky and the people were yelling and whistling from joy," she said.
But she conceded that security guards stopped the audience from leaving during Putin's speech and "some of the 22,000 bladders full of beer started to protest."
Putin's speech at the fight, where he had a ringside seat, would appear to fit in with his strongman image and passion for judo, in which he has a black belt. But he rarely speaks impromptu to untried audiences.
Last year, a video posted on YouTube showed victims of wildfires angrily heckling Putin, only for him to turn and walk away. But the incident was not shown on national television as in this case.
Emelianenko competes in the brutal Russian sport called mixed martial arts, which allows blows with legs and hands. It is also known in the country, somewhat appropriately, as "fight without rules."
Tattoo-covered Monson was led out by assistants, covered in blood after a blow to his face. The sport, a mixture of boxing, wrestling and kick boxing, is known in the West largely as ultimate fighting or no-holds-barred fighting.
Oddly enough, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, proved himself a fan of the bloodthirsty sport as Putin visited him on Sunday evening after the fight.
"I heard you came with good news," Kirill told Putin in comments posted on the Russian White House website, adding, "I've known Fedor for a long time and of course I congratulate him."
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