Heavyweight contender Arslanbek Makhmudov has been hitting the headlines long before it was announced that he would face Tyson Fury on April 11.
Makhmudov (21-2, 19 KOs) went viral for wrestling with a wild bear last year! The 6ft 6in Russian, who weighs in at over 260 pounds, was in the Russian woodlands as the viral moment, organized by friends, unfolded.
“My friend in Russia just asked me one day, and when someone challenges me to something, I can’t say no,” Makhmudov said while laughing, recalling his confrontation with the wild in an exclusive interview with Boxing-Social. “It’s a funny story. To be honest, I found it really interesting to test myself.
“So, we drove to the forest near Moscow. Can you imagine? We had just arrived in this forest and from about 150 meters away the bear started to make some noises. I swear to God, it was so scary because they make a crazy voice, like: ‘Arghhh,’ you know? Do you understand? In one second he can kill you like nothing!”
I certainly didn’t know what it was like to confront a bear. However, I laughed along with Makhmudov, who appeared to look back fondly on his encounter.
“Before I left, I asked my mother because where I’m from we have a lot of respect for our parents,” Makhmudov explained. “My mother misunderstood what I was asking. She must have thought I was talking about something else. I said, ‘Mama, one guy has asked me to wrestle a bear tomorrow.’ She said, ‘Okay, you go.’ I was quite surprised. Afterwards, when I went to rest, she said, ‘What were you doing?’ and that she wanted to kill me.
“Everyone was texting me after. Even my uncle, he started calling me crazy and wanted to know why I would do that and said I was a professional athlete and shouldn’t be doing things like that. I said to my mother, ‘You told me it was okay,’ and she said, ‘No, I never told you,’ and then we laughed and she told me that she misunderstood. She certainly doesn’t do that anymore.”
The fearsome-looking, although remarkably jovial, Makhmudov was likened in the British media to a James Bond villain ahead of defeating David Allen in a shutout points victory in Sheffield last October. However, the giant man from the mountains with a 90 percent knockout ratio wasn’t always so domineering.
“I wasn’t big when I was at school,” Makhmudov remembered. “I was around the middle. I was nine years old when I first went to the boxing gym. It was my uncle. He had a friend who was a boxing coach. My mother asked my uncle to give me some boxing sessions because when I was a kid, I was always fighting in the street. Where we are from in Dagestan, it is normal to fight in the street all the time. That’s why my mother was worried about this situation and thought I would get into some problems.
“I started to go to the boxing gym as a result, but even at the boxing gym I found trouble. I think after about a couple of years, I had a fight in the gym and they kicked me out. It was a good place to spend my energy and gave me some discipline.”
The 36-year-old grew up in Mozdok, Russia, a small town of less than 40,000 people in the North Caucasus in North Ossetia-Alania. Makhmudov would find himself traveling the world as an amateur before setting up in Montreal with longtime trainer Marc Ramsay.
“When I was about 14 I started to grow really fast and started to beat everyone up,” Makhmudov expressed with a chuckle. “My uncle showed me a documentary about Mike Tyson. I remember watching and being really impressed. Growing up I loved watching Tyson, he was very exciting, but as I got older I started to study Lennox Lewis. I met him in Canada once.”
Makhmudov has turned his career around since two knockout defeats inside three fights against Agit Kabayel and Guido Vianello. His opportunity to face one of the biggest names in the sport presents itself at a time when Fury will have been inactive for 16 months. The stars could be aligning for the Russian, with Fury reeling off back-to-back defeats to Oleksandr Usyk ahead of a bout his trainer says “comes at the perfect time.”
