Alexey Merzlikin and Tahir Tokarev defeated the Ukrainians and won the 2024 World Sambo Cup

A small but cozy sports arena on the northern outskirts of the capital of Armenia could not accommodate everyone who wanted to attend the final bouts of the first day of the World Sambo Cup. About a hundred Yerevan boys and adults crowded in front of the entrance to the palace in the hope of getting the coveted ticket or pass. But in vain! All seats in the auditorium were occupied by sambo lovers and tournament guests long before the start of the decisive bouts. On the only podium there was no chance of an apple falling. And this is not surprising, because sambo in this country is one of the most popular sports, and in terms of mass participation and the number of participants, it ranks first.

Despite the fact that only three local athletes made it to the final matches of the first competition day, the interest in the Cup, for which about 200 sambists from 14 countries of the world entered, was enormous! From the very first fight, twelve of them were planned in total, local fans began to zealously support all athletes, regardless of their nationality. In particular, the audience actively cheered for the ten Russians who made it to the evening finals. The subtleties of this martial arts sport are well known, felt and understood in Armenia.

Thus, the victory with a minimal score – 1:0 of ​​the young Russian sambo wrestler Ivan Agafonov over his athlete Karlen Makhinyan was appreciated by the Armenian spectators – with applause, and not with whistling and hooting, as often happens at football matches in relation to the winning visiting team. Our sambo wrestler, for whom performance at the World Cup was his debut at the adult international level, could not believe his success for a long time after the fight:

“This is the first time I managed to win such an award at such a serious competition. I am still experiencing incomprehensible and unfamiliar emotions. It is very difficult to perceive this and believe it. But it is clear that the finale is over. The referee blew the whistle and the victory was mine. My opponent in the final was, of course, greatly supported by the stands, but I came for the victory. At the end of the fight it was hard, I tried not to take risks, to act on grabs and I succeeded,” said Agafonov.

The local sambo wrestler was even more confidently defeated by Russian Vladimir Mnatsakanyan, who in the final of the weight category up to 64 kg simply did not let his opponent, the owner of the mat, Arthur Manukyan, breathe, defeating him ahead of schedule with a clear advantage. It should be noted that on the first day of the tournament, our guys showed a 100 percent result, winning all seven decisive bouts in sports sambo in which they participated. Two of them turned out to be purely Russian. In the weight category up to 88 kilograms, David Oganesyan defeated his compatriot Saidov, and in the weight category up to 98 kg, Dmitry Torganov defeated Daler Mikhalev with a painful hold.

The fight between two-time world champion Stanislav Scriabin from Russia and the winner of the last world championship Ivan Kharkov from Bulgaria in the weight category up to 79 kg seemed extremely interesting. In the middle of the fight, our sambo wrestler managed to perform a painful hold and defeat a serious opponent. After the final, our athlete, who took only fifth place at the Russian Championship, complained that he was unlikely to be able to continue his victorious pace on the world stage this season:

“The line-up of opponents at this World Cup is very decent. The name is different, but the participants are still the same as at the world championship. In the preliminary matches I beat Alexander Koksha from Belarus, the 2020 world champion, in the semi-finals against the Armenian, the silver medalist of the planet. In the final, he prevailed over the Bulgarian due to his homework – called stretching. Now I win thanks to technique, I used to quit, but now I don’t. I have almost no chance of getting to Europe or World. The winner of Russia is going to the world championship, the silver medalist is going to Europe. I missed this year – I only took fifth place,” complained Scriabin.

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In the girls’ combat sambo competition, three Russians made it to the finals, two of whom managed to become winners of this year’s Planet Cup. World and European champion Vera Lotkova defeated Gulvasar Urakova from Uzbekistan, and Yana Polyakova defeated another representative of this Asian country, Salakhiddinova. “This is not my best form that I have. I’m just accelerating. At the European Championships, which will be held in May in Serbia, you will see everything I can do,” admitted the winner of the tournament in Armenia, Lotkova.

But Nina Serdyuk was forced to leave the mat defeated, although she beat her opponent Kristina Bondar from the refugee team with a score of 1:0, but missed a painful submission at the end of the fight.

The real highlight of the first day of the World Cup was the final match in the men’s heavyweight category, in which Russian Alexey Merzlikin met his namesake Moiseev from Ukraine. Our hero, little by little, point by point, with a tremendous effort of all his strength and skill, gnawed at his advantage over a taller and more resilient opponent than him.

In the middle of the fight, it seemed that the Ukrainian was seizing the initiative from the domestic sambo wrestler, but at this exciting moment, when an oppressive silence hung over the arena, the Russian hero, having gathered all his remaining strength into a single fist, performed his signature painful hold on the Achilles and forced Ukrainians admit defeat. The MK-Sport correspondent saw the cost of this victory in the room under the stands when Alexey, having entered there, simply collapsed exhausted on the floor and could not come to his senses for about 20 minutes!

Having rested and caught his breath, Alexey explained what helped him gain the upper hand in this, without exaggeration, sports battle: “I was pressed by the colossal responsibility in the final with the Ukrainian before our country and the vast Motherland. I didn’t want to let down both our team and our beloved country, Russia, so I gave my all and won!”

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On the second and final day of the World Cup, there was no longer any increased excitement from local sambo fans. However, this fact was easily explained. Only one Armenian sambo wrestler Arman Avanesyan in the heavyweight combat sambo category made it to the final match. His fight with Uzbek Ozodbek Muratov became the most striking and scandalous of the evening. The spectators simply exploded at the moment when he scored the first points for a successful throw, and did not stop supporting their athlete until the end of the fight, constantly urging him forward with shouts of “come on, come on” in Russian and Armenian.

Arman’s opponent turned out to be not a timid one. Having withstood the initial onslaught of the owner of the carpet, he himself began to take active action. Ozodbek managed to make several effective shots, taking the lead himself – 7:5. In the last seconds of the fight, a noticeably tired Armenian athlete tried to correct the situation and please the local fans of this type of martial arts with a victory. He rushed into a desperate attack, and, as it might seem from the outside, made an effective throw. However, Avanesyan performed this move from the ground, which, according to the rules of sambo, does not bring points – the judges did not count it.

The upset Armenian sambo wrestler did not want to leave the mat for a long time. He sadly raised his hands up, trying first to find support from his fans so that they would influence the judges, and then he himself tried to convince the referees of the correctness of his decision, having a long conversation with the chief judge of the competition. However, Arman failed to pity the servants of the SAMBO Themis so that they would watch at least the video replay. He left the wrestling gym in his homeland devastated and broken.

Domestic sambo fans, of course, were most concerned with the question of how Russian athletes performed on the second day of the World Cup? Just like the day before – good and even excellent! Fifteen of our compatriots immediately made it to the evening part of the competition. Moreover, five final matches immediately became purely Russian. But even more interest and increased attention was attracted by four fights for “gold”, in which domestic and Ukrainian sambo wrestlers were supposed to go head to head.

The second most entertaining, but the most important for us in terms of significance was the fight that opened the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation of the second day of the World Cup, the official partner of which was VTB Bank, in the weight category up to 64 kg in combat sambo between Kstovo native Tahir Tokarev and Alexander Voropaev. Both sambo wrestlers carried out their preliminary fights in the morning part of the competition extremely confidently, literally defeating their opponents. The fans were looking forward to an interesting and dynamic fight, and both athletes did not disappoint them in their expectations.

The start of the match was left to the opponent of our sambo wrestler – Voropaev managed to land several accurate blows and take the lead, but then Tahir, who, as it turned out later, competed in the final with a serious injury to his right hand, managed to turn the tide of the match. Our two-time world champion in hand-to-hand combat first earned one effective point for a throw, then a second, then performed a third technique and went for a painful one. “Yessss,” our athlete shouted loudly when his opponent tapped the mat, admitting defeat.

As Tokarev said after the fight, he just needed to throw out his emotions after a difficult fight. He called all his rivals brothers, including his opponent in the finals. After the match, the guys shook hands with each other in the tribune room: “There was nothing fundamental for me in the decisive match of the tournament. We are brothers! I say this sincerely and with all my heart. I love my opponents. I love what I do. They give me the opportunity to grow, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a representative of Ukraine, the CIS or other countries. Yes, I didn’t have to scream after the fight, because they could find some kind of subtext in it.

It was just joy that I didn’t break my right arm. I either have a fracture or a crack there. I damaged it in the second fight, when I performed a side step (avoiding an opponent’s blow to the side, followed by an instant counterattack – Ed.). I tried very hard, but the representative of Uzbekistan’s head turned out to be stronger than my hand (laughs). I couldn’t even hold a grip in the finals. Therefore, thank God that everything ended so quickly in my favor – I am very happy. It was important for me to win here, because for winning the World Cup they are given the title of international master of sports,” Tahir clarified.

***

Ibragim Kortoev in the weight category up to 71 kg failed to support the initiative of his teammate and lost his final match against the representative of Nezalezhnaya Andrey Kucherenko. How Alena Chelombitko lost in her fight to the Ukrainian. Elena Allyonova managed to even the score in this battle, who in the weight category up to 80 kg, thanks to a painful hold, defeated her rival Galina Kovalskaya: “For me, the main thing in the final was to get ready. That’s all. A new opponent, new techniques, unfamiliar to me – I had to be ready for anything. For me, it didn’t matter where she was from – she was just a rival that I had to go up against, fight and win,” said our sambo wrestler after the final.

Thus, taking into account the victory of Alexey Merzlikin in the super heavy weight category in sports sambo on the first day of the World Cup, our sambo wrestlers won this peculiar Russian-Ukrainian confrontation – 3:2. In total, domestic sambo wrestlers, who competed at the tournament in Yerevan in a neutral status, won 16 gold medals in 26 weight categories in sport and combat sambo, confidently taking first place in the unofficial team competition.

The winning point for the performance of Russian athletes in the capital of Armenia was set by the current world champion in combat sambo Mikhail Kashurnikov, who was opposed by compatriot Hasan Kharkhachaev in the final. Many expected a persistent, interesting and uncompromising fight in this fight, but our athletes limited themselves to only positional wrestling, having agreed before the fight that they would not engage in active actions so as not to injure each other. Due to fewer warnings, Kashurnikov became the winner of the World Cup for the first time in his career.

This 26-year-old student of the capital’s Sambo-70 school is considered by many to be Fedor Emelianenko’s successor on the “imperial throne” and is predicted to have a great future in MMA, where he will move after finishing his amateur sambo career.