CaucasTalk Episode 30: Sports in the North Caucasus: Wrestling, Boxing & Martial Arts

The North Caucasus is a region that has suffered from negative stereotypes, and doesn't usually fit together with the concept of tourism. A pair of American expats in the region are seeking to change that. Andrew and Eli, hosts of CaucasTalk podcast, explain the region's culture, history, and tourism to the uninitiated.

This episode deals with sport: namely, the combat variety. The region has some formidable stats: Caucasian athletes, competing for a variety of countries, have won some 230 Olympic medals in wrestling, boxing, and weightlifting in the past 70 years - a statistic that, taken together, puts them far ahead of any existing country. It has also dominated recently in mixed martial arts, particularly Dagestan, which has produced current world lightweight MMA champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Most of the episode is focused on the idea of what it takes to put in 10,000 hours of practice in combat sports. There's some interesting chatter about the impact of cultural legacy, related by Andrew and Eli's anecdotes about regularly being shown the family's sports trophies when visiting locals, clearly showing the value placed upon them. The gaps in knowledge are somewhat frustrating - the hosts' explanations for martial prowess are pure guesswork, absent of any real insightful stories, research, or anecdotes from locals. The hosts correctly identify the centrality of the martial nature of the culture, but they don't really explain or expand upon this in any engaging or enlightening manner.

This episode was a bit of a letdown, in that I feel like I really didn't pick up much new knowledge or entertainment on the topic. The concept of the podcast is great, so hopefully this was just an outlier (!) and a topic the hosts knew less about than normal. I'm sure I'll listen to more episodes myself, but presently it's tough for me to recommend the series to people, whether newcomers to the region or those already knowledgeable on it.