Athlete of the Month – Abylaykhan Zhussupov
Athlete of the Month – Abylaykhan Zhussupov
The Asian Boxing Confederation’s first Facebook voting for the Athlete of the Month was a great success and the boxing fans named Kazakhstan’s 19-year-old Abylaykhan Zhussupov as the best in March who won the gold medal at the AIBA Asian & Oceanian Confederation Youth Boxing Championships in Qian’an with top performance.
Abylaykhan Zhussupov was born in Central Kazakhstan on January 10 in 1997 and began his boxing career at the age of 10. He started our sport in the city of Abay where London 2012 Olympic Champion Serik Sapiyev began his career. The young Zhussupov has got the realistic chance to run the same boxing career as their national icon Serik Sapiyev and many other top Kazakh athletes.
Zhussupov was bronze medallist at the 2011 Kazakhstan Junior National Championships at the age of 14 which was his first main competition after the regional events. He claimed a silver medal at the next Kazakhstan Junior National Championships in 2012 when only experienced Zatulla Rauan was able to beat him by accepted scores. Zhussupov was involved to the national squad following that event and proved his excellent skills at the Children of Asia Games in Yakutsk where he topped the top of the podium.
Zhussupov dominated his second year among the junior boxers and bagged four gold medals in 2013. The Central Asian boxer claimed his first national junior title in January 2013 defeating Abilkhan Amankul in the final and following that event he achieved the gold medal at the Aleksey Yukov Junior Memorial Tournament in Gomel, Belarus.
Following these events Abylaykhan Zhussupov travelled as the top favourite the ASBC Asian Confederation Junior Boxing Championships to Shymkent, Kazakhstan and he could realize the expectations winning the gold medal after beating Tajikistan’s Dalerzhon Khuseinov in the final of the Featherweight class (57 kg).
Zhussupov had five contests in the main event in 2013 at the AIBA Junior World Boxing Championships in Kiev, Ukraine and he was able to beat all of his rivals once again. His closest bout was the quarter-final against England’s Dalton Smith but after that contest he triumphed over Turkey’s Onur Arslan and Russia’s Gusein Magomedov as well. Following these amazing results he was named as the Best Asian Junior Boxer in 2013.
Zhussupov joined to the youth level in January of 2014 and continued the winning path at the ASBC Asian Confederation Youth Boxing Championships in Bangkok, Thailand. He moved up to the Lightweight class (60 kg) but he adopted the strength of the punches very quickly and defeated his four rivals including Japan’s Go Hosaka and Syria’s Ahmad Ghossoun by large margin of differences.
The rising star was in a perfect form at the AIBA Youth World Boxing Championships in Sofia and had an extremely strong draw in the event. In spite of his six world class opponents he was able to beat all of them: US hope Isidro Ochoa, Russia’s European Junior Champion Tamerlan Batdiyev, Moldova’s unbeaten Dorin Bucsa, Hungary’s best youth athlete Richard Konnyu, Uzbekistan’s Agalarov Youth Cup winner Ikboljon Kholdarov and Romania’s tough Arsen Mustafa for the gold medal.
The Karagandy-based Lightweight class (60 kg) boxer continued the winning path in 2014 as well therefore his final victory over Cuba’s AIBA Junior World Champion Alain Limonta was an expected result during the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games where he dominated his gold medal bout against the Caribbean boxer. Zhussupov won his third huge title in Nanjing in 2014 which was Asia’s second gold in the Youth Olympic Games and the first one among the men athletes.
Zhussupov competed in a few elite competitions in 2015 short after his 18th birthday to raise his experiences and used these months as preparation for the next Olympic year. Kazakhstan had difficulties in the Light Welterweight class (64 kg) in the recent two and half years after AIBA World Champion Merey Akshalov retired from the sport but their head coach Mr. Myrzagali Aitzhanov found the new titan and involved to the squad.
Abylaykhan Zhussupov turned to 19 in January and his efforts were enough to win his first big elite international competition at the Bocskai Memorial Tournament in Debrecen, Hungary after beating Canada’s Toronto 2015 Panamerican Games gold medallist Arthur Biyarslanov and Azerbaijan’s Baku 2015 European Games winner Lorenzo Sotomayor in the final of the Light Welterweight class (64 kg).
The Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games winner teenage talent Abylaykhan Zhussupov was too strong for India’s Manoj Kumar, Korea’s Lim Hyun Chul, Australia’s David Biddle and China’s Hu Qianxun in the road to the finals at the AIBA Asian & Oceanian Olympic Qualification Event in Qian’an. His final opponent was Mongolia’s World Military Games winner Battarsukh Chinzorig who was a competitive rival for the teenager but could not stop his counter-attacks therefore Zhussupov was crowned in Qian’an and qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games as the youngest boxer in the national team of Kazakhstan.