Why Are Caucasus UFC Fighters So Good?

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Merab Dvalishvili (R) throws a kick at Henry Cejudo during their bantamweight bout at UFC 298 in California. (Photo: Mark J. Terrill / AP)

At the biggest international fighting event so far this year, all four athletes competing for world championship titles hail from the Caucasus.

Merab Dvalishvili theorized why:

“We are a tough people, we used to have war all the time. Because we have such nice territory, enemies always used to come to our country and always we used to defend ourselves, our families, our land.” As a result, he says, “fighting is in our DNA.”

Arman Tsarukyan celebrates with supporters after victory in a UFC event in Texas in Dec 2023. (Photo: Dustin Safranek USATODAY Sports / Reuters)



Men wrestling at a festival in Daghestan, Russia, in 1996. (Photo: Irini Volokova/TASS)

In impoverished mountain villages, wrestling has the advantage of requiring, in its most basic form, only some flat grass and the human body. Fighters in Daghestan frequently utilize their rugged landscape to train, with champions filmed swimming in the region's icy rivers, and jogging up its mountains for endurance.

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