Staying a champion is exponentially harder than becoming one, because money, fame, and comfort destroy the hunger that got you there.

24:33Makhachkala to Sildi. Otherwise, keeping it more down to earth, we go by car, so there's absolutely no problem. - I could never get used to a wealthy life. It's just, it's not in my blood to be like that. - All right, then we'll go by car. - Yeah, we could go on horseback, but a car is better. - No, no, by car is better. On horseback takes way too long.

24:52- Um, so you mentioned money, and we were just talking about comfort because right now there are so many champions. They win so much. Things are going so well. How much harder is it to stay a champion when the money and the fame start coming in, when all that stuff starts showing up? - Well, those are all distracting things. When you become a champion, there's a massive amount of attention on you. Sometimes it's contracts,

25:22sometimes you end up having to fly a lot, you start getting busy with things, and little by little you begin to miss your workouts. You miss one, you miss two, you miss three. And all of that takes a toll, and the person who used to train with such a drive, with a hunger to be the best, as soon as they actually become the best, they just don't know what to do next. And

25:45they live their whole life just to become, stay on the top. As soon as they get there, what are they supposed to do? That's it. They already made it. They've reached their goal, and there are just so many distracting factors: money, flights, you know, meetings, contracts, video shoots. There are just so many distracting factors. And so if a person doesn't know how to handle all of this,

26:18then that person comes down from the top real fast. And I'm saying this based on my own experience, from what I've seen all around me with the ones who came before me. And back then when I was training with my father, his students who went on to become world champions, just how they finished their careers and so on. And it's what I saw from my own observations of other types of sports, how they came back down,

26:45as far as I've learned. This is a very delicate moment. If a person climbing all the way to the top, if they can handle all of that, that already shows they have an incredibly serious mindset. Reaching the championship and staying there, reaching it is one thing, but staying a champion, that's totally different. It's incredibly tough. - You're saying that even on a local level, once you become a champion, that's already

27:13the tough moment because a lot of people who start winning, like you said, they stop fighting, they quit doing MMA and switch over to fitness. They find themselves that comfort. But holding onto it is hard, even on a local level. Every single time you become more and more of a champion, you won the Sambo championship, you keep winning more and more, and every time it gets harder.

27:42- Yes, and it depends on the person's goals. If you want to become an amateur champion just to prove something to yourself, that's one thing. But if you view amateur sports as a springboard to jump right into professional sports and become a champion among professionals, that's a whole different thing. There are different paths. First, you build an amateur career just to get into the pros and go even further from there. Second,