Uzbekistan’s coach Alisher Rakhimov supported Nepal’s impressive successes at the South Asian Games

Alisher Rakhimov is one of the best Uzbek boxing coaches who supported Nepal’s development and successes in the recent months especially at the South Asian Games which was held in Kathmandu last December. Nepal earned three gold, six silver and six bronze medals and became runner-up in the team standings behind the region’s power India.  

Alisher Rakhimov was born in the city of Urgench in the Uzbek SSR of the Soviet Union on October 23 in 1977. He began his boxing career with the support of coach Marat Kurbanov in Urgench in 1988 still in the era of the Soviet Union.

Rakhimov won the Uzbekistan Cadet National Championships and the Uzbekistan Junior National Championships both events twice between 1992 and 1995. He claimed his first elite gold in 1996 when he won their National Spartakyad at the light flyweight (48kg). His first international elite event out of Uzbekistan was the Acropolis Cup in Athens in 1996 where he earned a silver medal at the flyweight (51kg).

Rakhimov achieved bronze medal at the King’s Cup in Thailand one year later and reached the Top8 at the Budapest 1997 AIBA World Boxing Championships. He won the gold medal at the 1998 Ahmet Comert Tournament in Turkey but had to miss the Asian Games in Bangkok in that year.

His career highlight was the gold medal at the 1999 Asian Boxing Championships and from that event he qualified for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. He competed at the Houston 1999 AIBA World Boxing Championships but he was unlucky with the draw there and in Sydney as well due to his first challenges were against Russian boxers.

Rakhimov attended at the Belfast 2001 AIBA World Boxing Championships and won medals in several international events before turning professional in 2004. Rakhimov won the title of the Uzbekistan National Championships six-times as amateur. His professional record was impressive 25 victories and only 3 losses between 2004 and 2014.  

Alisher Rakhimov joined back to the boxing business as a coach and he signed with Nepal Boxing in 2019. Nepal impressed in the South Asian Games on December 2019, where his pupils achieved 15 medals on home soil and three of them won their weight classes. Rakhimov is planning to return to Nepal after the Covid-19 pandemic to continue the developments of the South Asian country’s boxing life.

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