How does Armenia produce so many good/elite fighters?

[Prime Goku]

For comparison, Dagestan has a population of 3.2 million and Armenia 2.7 million.

Look at the list of some Armenian fighters, the pound for pound best country in the world at producing fighters?

Gegard Mousasi
Karo Parisyan
Arman Tsarukyan
Edmen Shahbazyan
Eduard Vartanyan
Armen Petrosyan
Manvel Gamburyan
Daniel Sarafian
Marat Grigorian
Giorgio Petrosyan (105-3 kickboxing record)

They're not all elite fighters obviously, but for a small population, pretty damn impressive.

 

[Hellowhosthat]

They hardly produced any of those fighters, they're mostly prospects of American, Dutch, Russian and Brazilian gyms.

 

[OldBoy91]

Sarafian is Brazilian, with Armenian heritage.

Same with a lot of those guys being Russian. Mousasi is Dutch etc.

Never understood this mindset. It's like claiming Machida is Japanese or Bisping is Polish. Makes no sense.

 

[Young Calf Kick]

Let's see...

Mousasi is Dutch
Parisyan only started training martial arts after he was in America for 3 years
Shahbazyan is American
Vantanyan is Russian

Most of the rest of that list haven't trained in Armenia for longer than a couple of years when they were young.

But if I had to answer your question, rumor has it all Armenian boys are baptized and dipped in Secret Juice, mandated by the government

 

[Zab3ast]

Turks pumped that dawg in em

 

[Koala]

Armenian diaspora will be more accurate as those guys grew up in Italy, the Netherlands, California, Russia, and so and so
No idea of the size of the diaspora
By the way, if you add all martial arts, the number of Dagestanis better than Gamburyan will be insane

 

[Pain4Pain]

Greco is the main combat sport in the country. Good boxers too including Martirosyan, Darchinyan, Abraham, Lemieux.

 

[joey gerbils]

Armenia is right smack in the middle of a region known for producing excellent wrestlers (Dagestan, Chechnya, turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Georgia) etc etc these countries/regions regularly do well in international wrestling

 

[doggo]

Dunno, why does planet Vegeta produce even better fighters than Armenia?

 

[moreorless87]

In both cases I think its a combination of both a strong martial arts culture and not many ways to earn money from it besides MMA.

My guess would be even in Russia white slavic guys have an easier time getting state funding than they do in Dagestan for things like wrestling and judo.

 

[HatKick]

Armenians are mean. That's why it's called Armenia

 

[TheBulge]

They're phenomenal fighters. That country(or the genes they produced) produced great MMA fighters, kickboxers, boxers, wrestlers, judoka etc.

 

[Human Bass]

 

[WuDi]

Poverty, genes, strong patriarchy and easy access to top grade juice from an early age.

 

[Feniamin]

Let's see...

Mousasi is Dutch
Parisyan only started training martial arts after he was in America for 3 years
Shahbazyan is American
Vantanyan is Russian

Most of the rest of that list haven't trained in Armenia for longer than a couple of years when they were young.

But if I had to answer your question, rumor has it all Armenian boys are baptized and dipped in Secret Juice, mandated by the government

Vartanyan was born in Armenia and from what I understand holds Armenian and Russian citizenships.

 

[nostradumbass]

Doesn't seem like they do. You listed the population who live in Armenia, but the guys you listed aren't part of that. The number of ethnic Armenians living elsewhere is closer to 10 million. For a group of 10 million from a somewhat macho culture, the list should actually be way longer than it is.

Dagestan is guys actually from Dagestan, trained in Dagestan, and has a bunch of champs and #1 p4p guys in mma, and goats in wrestling. That's way more of an outlier place than Armenia, and so is Netherlands since we're counting kickboxing.

 

[RonDante]

Sarafian is Brazilian, with Armenian heritage.

Same with a lot of those guys being Russian. Mousasi is Dutch etc.

Never understood this mindset. It's like claiming Machida is Japanese or Bisping is Polish. Makes no sense.

If machidas entire family in both lines was Japanese it would make a lot of sense

 

[nostradumbass]

Vartanyan was born in Armenia and from what I understand holds Armenian and Russian citizenships.

Only his dad is Armenian. His mom is Russian and he grew up in Moscow.

 

[Feniamin]

Doesn't seem like they do. You listed the population who live in Armenia, but the guys you listed aren't part of that. The number of ethnic Armenians living elsewhere is closer to 10 million. For a group of 10 million from a somewhat macho culture, the list should actually be way longer than it is.

Dagestan is guys actually from Dagestan, trained in Dagestan, and has a bunch of champs and #1 p4p guys in mma, and goats in wrestling. That's way more of an outlier place than Armenia, and so is Netherlands since we're counting kickboxing.

Actually no, I think lots of guys who Sherdog counts as Dagestani has not a lot of connections to it - I think all guys from Umalatov family was born outside of Dagestan, Omari Akhmedov mentioned something like living in Yakutia (like going to school there), Bagautinov mentioned going to school in Orenburg oblast that borders Kazakhstan. I think Khabib started his mma career in Ukraine where he was living with his dad for a few years and then either lived in Saint-Petersburg or represented gym from there.

 

[Feniamin]

Only his dad is Armenian. His mom is Russian and he grew up in Moscow.

And between Armenia and Russia he lived in Kazakhstan. Not sure but I think he said that his dad holds Kazakhstani citizenship and has a business/work there.