Khabib Nurmagomedov
On Youtube a number of years ago, a video of a young child wrestling a bear cub in a foreign land gained some notoriety. But at the time, no one knew who it was. It was only a long time later that rising UFC star Khabib Nurmagomedov confirmed that he was the boy in the video, revealing that it had been taken when he was just nine years old in the hills of Dagestan. He said the bear was, “my friend from childhood and my best sparring partner.”
Nurmagomedov received some backlash from animal rights groups for the video. But at the same time, it also increased the mystique surrounding the undefeated fighter. “It is a pity that there was nothing more interesting when he was younger,” Nurmagomedov’s father ruefully told fight.ru. “In the end, this was a test of character more than exercise.”
