[dropcap]D[/dropcap]CU MMA Alumnus, Alexander Yankov, was crowned the ISKA Irish Kickboxing champion in the featherweight division after stopping the reigning champion in the 4th round.
While Yankov’s win was in kickboxing, he is still of the opinion that MMA is the main goal. While the kickboxing success is impressive he also enters many other discipline competitions like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments to improve his skills for a more well-rounded game.
Yankov began his MMA career 5 years ago with DCU MMA and when asked about the club Yankov clarified that while the club is amazing for beginners it also works for everyone beyond that level. With coach Oisin McCabe’s approach, there is a large importance placed on the fundamentals.
Yankov explained, “It allows me to practice and repeat the basics while the beginners are learning something new that is applicable in a real life situation. It teaches patience but people tend to transition from beginners to intermediate and advanced quickly in the club.”
DCU MMA has had a lot of success lately and one of the main reasons for this can be traced back to coach McCabe. High praise was given to him by Yankov when he said that “because of his lifelong journey of martial arts he is able to give many perspectives from different spheres of the sport.
“He understands what works and what doesn’t, so training with him is optimal. Everyone fighting under his coaching tends to have very high fight IQ and a solid game plan.”
The success of the club has been immense in the last 12 months with 3 members winning 8 Championship Belts, including 3 National Titles in Kickboxing as well as a lot of our other male and female members achieving success and winning kickboxing bouts & Jiu-Jitsu tournaments.
Yankov was of the opinion that there are steps the college could take to further assist in this. “The team is doing so well with very little resources and that with small help from DCU we can do even better” he went on to say that if they could use the gym for strength and conditioning and the sauna for relaxation, the fighters would be able to train and heal more efficiently.
While Yankov is satisfied with his performances so far as a featherweight, he said he would ideally like to cut weight further to move down to bantamweight as he transitions from an amateur to a professional.
Training is back with MMA classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Coach McCabe was enthusiastic about the return saying that “all of DCU MMA’s Dublin based members have been training hard over the summer in my club Compound Martial Arts and are raring to go for 2018/2019.”
“We are looking forward to welcoming a new wave of new members to DCU MMA to join our current members and experience the benefits for mind and body that Martial Arts brings and will have our first competition in DCU, December 16th.”
Hugh Farrell
Image Credit: Claude Wynne.