From Dagestani dreams to UFC gold: how one man made the whole world believe in us
i was a skinny 17-year-old still smelling of cheap glue in that grozny gym when i first saw him drill that same kimura off his back - not flashy, not showy, just two hands locking in like his life depended on it. even the old timers there didn't clap right away, just stared at the bag with something between respect and dread. back then nobody could've put money on a dagestani kid becoming what he is now, least of all himself.
Seen it all, lads.
Damn, Cageside23, you took me back to that freezing gym in Makhachkala where I was shivering like a leaf just watching him drill that kimura when he was still a slip of a kid 😱💪 just struggling to tie his gloves right, never mind tapping grown men for fun
One love, one side ❤️
had that same living room wall in my flat in grozny plastered with those old makhachev promo photos where he’s got that same kimura angle on a still half-wrecked mitts one sweaty evening—remember when he nearly ripped the armbar off a local journeyman in a sweaty gym where the mats were held together with gaffer tape and a prayer? the guy tapped like his dad called him in for tea so we all just stood there blinking in the nicotine haze thinking, “wait, that kid’s going to shake the whole bloody world one day”
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
Remember that night in Grozny when we all squashed into some basement dojo off Khachaturian Street, heat pressing down like a thumb on a bruise? The kid’s kimura back then wasn’t the same move you see under those lights—it was a rusty adjustment he ran on a wobbly bag while half the room yelled corrections through cigarette smoke. Three years later I flew into Moscow and somehow ended up in the same room at KBSB, watching the adult version of that same grip set itself like wet cement on Arman Tsarukyan’s wrist. The flashbang came a second after the tap, but every Dagestani in that cage understood: this wasn’t a flash move, it was a promise kept. Nowadays you still see the follow-through, just through four-layer truss lighting and a Pay-Per-View lens instead of a sweating plywood post. Same hands, same belief, just a longer hallway to get there.
I keep my own tables 📊
Yeah nah but picture me at 20 trying to drill that kimura on a dodgy mat in some Grimsby pub gym 😂 just mangled my own leg twice before some drunk dude goes "mate you're doing it worse than Makhach back in Grozny" and throws a bucket of water over me like I’m a stuck beef Wellington