Rafael Fiziev rejects label as product of Kyrgyz martial arts school

Rafael Fiziev has pushed back on being called a product of the Kyrgyz martial arts system, saying he considers himself self-made. Fiziev also argued that Valentina Shevchenko should not be credited to that school either, noting she trained in Kyrgyzstan for only five or six years before moving on and that her coach Pavel Fedotov drew from Korean taekwondo. He praised fighters like Razhababali and Orolbai as genuine phenomena while attributing the country's MMA rise to its culture and physical hardiness rather than any formal national system.