Kurash is one of the oldest traditional fighting styles known to mankind. According to research, the game emerged in the territory of present-day Uzbekistan at least 3,500 years ago.
In Uzbek, “Kurash” means “achieving a goal in an honest way”. In its day, this fighting technique was used during wars to protect the population. Men flaunted their mastery of Kurash during weddings, festivals, and national and local celebrations. It is mentioned in numerous ancient historical and literary sources.
In Central Asia the technique, tradition, rules and philosophy of Kurash wrestling were passed orally from generation to generation, from father to son. The first attempt to collect and summarize this knowledge was made in 1990.
Prior to this, Kurash was not considered an independent sport subject to a series of rules and requirements. Numerous local athletes, trained in the Kurash style of fighting since childhood, later fell in love with the sport and began to try various disciplines eventually becoming world champions and prize winners.
Komil Yusupov, the founder of modern Kurash, also chose this path. The Uzbek athlete was an international sports master in sambo and judo, and a member of the former USSR Olympic judo team.
In 1980, after the death of his mother and some health problems, Yusupov had to withdraw from the Moscow Olympics in which he was the clear favorite.
The inability to pursue a professional sporting career only motivated Komil Yusupov to turn his attention to transforming the national Kurash wrestling into an international sporting discipline that could be part of the Olympic Games programme.
Yusupov began to work on a set of rules for the Kurash fight. For this purpose, he analyzed the rules of various sports disciplines that were part of the program of the Olympic Games. Yusupov’s rules unified the thousand-year-old tradition of Kurash with the sporting requirements of today.
He introduced the concept of the weight category, the Kurash movements, proposed terminology based on 14 Uzbek words and established the duration of the fight. He designed the athletes’ and judges’ uniform and other attributes without which modern sport would be hard to imagine.
In 1992, with the personal support of the President of Uzbekistan, the first international Kurash competition for the President’s Prize was held. It was dedicated to the memory of the great medieval commander Amir Temur. To date, more than 300 international competitions have taken place in various parts of the world, as well as uninterrupted continental Kurash championships in Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania and all of America.
Thanks to the initiative of Komil Yusupov, an international congress was held on September 6, 1998 in the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, in which teams from 28 countries participated. The congress took a unanimous decision to support Yusupov’s personal initiative to create a new international organization under the name of International Kurash Organisation. As a result, this day is remembered by all Kurash fans as the day of transformation of the traditional game into a new type of international sport.
Since 1998, Kurash confederations have been officially opened on 5 continents (in Africa, America, Europe, Asia and Oceania), and 136 national Kurash federations have been created.
In 2033, Kurash was recognized as an Asian sport and was officially included in all continental games held on the Asian continent. This allowed Kurash competitions to be included in the program of the Asian Summer Games, Asian Indoor Games, Asian Beach Games and Asian Martial Arts Games.
Currently, work is being done to include Kurash in the competition program of the European Games and the Islamic Solidarity Games. The main goal is to include the Kurash in the program of the Summer Olympics.
