By Rumaiza Norova, OCA Youth Reporter
Nagoya, Japan, September 25, 2026: Kadyrbek Shinbayev had barely secured Asian Games gold when he turned back towards the opponent he had just
beaten.
Tajikistan’s Behruz Khurshedzoda was still on his knees after the Men’s Modern MMA -71kg final, and the Kazakh champion walked over, embraced him and spoke to him before they left the competition area.
Shinbayev had defeated Khurshedzoda 3-0, giving Kazakhstan its second MMA gold of the Asian Games after Yerkingali Burkutalin had won the Traditional
MMA -77kg title earlier that day.
With MMA making its Asian Games debut at Aichi-Nagoya 2026, the result also placed both Kazakh
champions among the event’s first gold medallists in the sport.
For Shinbayev, the man across from him was already familiar. He said he had been aware of Khurshedzoda as a competitor for three or four years, but the pair got to know each other personally over the past
seven or eight months.
They had already met in the final of the Asian MMA Championships in China, where Shinbayev won by split decision. Their paths continued to cross afterwards. “Two months ago he told me, ‘Brother,
inshallah, we’ll meet at the Asian Games in Japan.’ I said, ‘Let’s go,’” Shinbayev recalled. “And we met again in the final.”
That history explained the warmth between them after the final. “He’s a good guy. Strong, a wrestler, and he fights well standing up,” Shinbayev said. “Only respect.”
The title came at the end of a demanding route through the -71kg bracket. Shinbayev defeated Bahrain’s Kurban Idrisov in the quarter-final before beating Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Shavkatov 3-0 in the semi-final and advancing to his rematch with Khurshedzoda.
“The tournament overall was very difficult,” he said. “We gave everything, 100 per cent. We waited for this victory, worked and trained for it, and achieved one of our goals.”
He added that he and his coach had prepared a specific plan for the final and worked on mistakes in training before the bout.
The gold also completed a conversation that had started long before Shinbayev arrived in Japan. He recalled setting the goal with a Kazakhstan teammate about a year earlier, while qualification was
still ahead of them. “We said to each other, ‘What if we become Asian Games champions?’” he said. “We became champions. I think we stayed in history.”
For now, Shinbayev is not rushing towards the next target. He said he plans to take 15 to 20 days away from competition and return home before thinking seriously about what follows, with professional bouts
a possibility later in the year.
After months of preparation and a second final against an opponent he had come to know, Shinbayev struggled to reduce the moment to a neat
sentence. “The emotions are impossible to describe,” he said. “I don’t know how to put them into words.”