Khabib Nurmagomedov: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, that’s a powerful aspect of their culture. How much people, how much the whole nation loves to play football. And if you add to that a system that creates strong teams, that’s how you can produce so many football legends. Yes. Take Dagestan, for example. We love football. I just know how much people in Dagestan love football. Yes, we have wrestlers, fighters. There are many of us. But for football players, there is no ecosystem like that. Not so well organized where a kid can, for example, play at school, then go to some academy, then get noticed there, and then get picked up by a club. We don’t have that system. It’s just kids running on the streets, playing on the streets, following football. Let’s say playing on PlayStation. There is no system. There is no selection process where kids can go and show themselves, so they can be noticed and get signed. I think Brazil and other countries, and of course Europe, they have it. So yeah, we have big problems with football. However, in our sports where you can wrestle, where you can fight, in that sense, we have a system. For example, the gyms, you know, in Makhachkala, let’s say for combat sports. I’m not even counting like freestyle wrestling or other styles. There may be forty or fifty gyms for combat sports, and all are full. If you win in Dagestan, you move on to the North Caucasus level, then to the Russian nationals. If you’re champion of Russia, you go to the Worlds. In amateurs, they notice you and you make a name for yourself. There is a certain ladder here. But in many other sports here in Dagestan, we don’t have such a well-structured ladder for people to climb. Can we look at this philosophically again? I mean, you’ve seen so many wrestlers, fighters. Why exactly were these gyms creating so many champions? I’m just honestly curious because it’s rare in any sport, one gym or a small number of gyms creating so many champions.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.