I’ll tell you a little bit about how I started doing martial arts.

Where I was born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, wrestling is the most popular sport. Wherever there was an event – wedding, anniversary or anything like this – there was always a wrestling mat. People gathered together and, regardless of weight categories, competed and fought.

In 2013, my friends and I played soccer on the playground and it was there that we met our first Greco-Roman wrestling coach. He got us interested in the sport so we started doing it.

We have our own wrestling style in Kyrgyzstan with a belt called “Kyrgyz Kurosh” and I participated in this. It’s true that I lost most of my early fights. I was skinny then – very boney. The person that won usually got valuable prizes such as cars, camels, horses and cash prizes.

The audiences at major events was more than 500 people – sometimes thousands of people showed up. Whoever wins will be congratulated and the whole area where you’re from will celebrate and talk about the victory for at least a month.

All the teenagers look up to these guys. They want to become a winner like him and a respected hero. I was one of them.

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Mixing it up

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At that time, my only thought was to win at least one tournament. I wanted people to talk about me as a strong person and champion. And that’s how we started training and working hard. But it was difficult to win there because most of the competition were physically very strong guys.

I then started to study MMA and tried various types of martial arts and realised my goals weren’t the same as before. I knew I needed to take this more seriously and professionally because I wanted to represent not only myself, but also my country at international level.

In this sport, the support of my family, friends, countrymen and fans makes me very happy. When you watch people who are happy for you and support you, you will want to work harder and win for them even more. That’s my motivation – without fans, this sport is nothing.