How Dagestan’s ‘Shaolin Temple’ produced UFC stars Zabit Magomedsharipov and Muslim Salikhov
- Zabit and Salikhov’s traditional martial arts values instilled in them as students at a wushu academy founded by painter and philosopher in an empty field
- ‘The main goal is to develop all-rounded human beings,’ says school’s coach – ‘the world will know our lads conduct themselves with dignity’
Russia already has two UFC champions. Zabit Magomedsharipov, from the Russian republic of Dagestan, could soon become the third. Another promising Dagestani fighter, Muslim Salikhov, was signed by UFC in 2017 and won his last four bouts.
Zabit and Salikhov, practitioners of traditional Chinese martial art wushu sanda, are humble and courteous to a fault. The only thing media have to talk about are their performances in the Octagon.
These traditional martial arts values were instilled in them when the pair where students at a boarding school known as Dagestan’s Shaolin Temple.
Called Pyat Storon Sveta in Russian, or “five cardinal directions” (North, South, East and West, plus a fifth one that symbolises personal enlightenment) the school teaches wushu. It was founded by philosopher and painter Gusein Magomaev and his wife, Olga.
Magomaev, now 70, was one of the most successful karate instructors in the Soviet Union. But in the early 1980s he switched to wushu, considering it the origin of all martial arts.
The couple then left Moscow for Gusein’s native Dagestan, a multi-ethnic mountainous region in the south of Russia. Next to a village called Khalimbek-Aul, the Magomaevs started to build a wushu academy from scratch in an empty field. Soon hundreds of people started to arrive from all over the Soviet Union to learn.