Mokaev’s journey to mixed martial arts was a winding one. Mokaev and his father Murad fled Russia with no money and just a bag of clothes, and in the summer of 2012, they ended up at a refugee center in Liverpool for 28 days. From there, they were relocated to a home in Wigan.
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After a while, Mokaev’s father bribed his son to go to the Wigan Youth Zone every day so he could keep him off the streets and with the wrong crowd. There, Mokaev was introduced to wrestling and went on to become the British champion in wrestling and the European champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
