Buvaisar Saitiev

Buvaisar Hamidovich Saitiev, also spelled Buvaysar Hamidovich Saytiev, (Russian: Бувайсар Хамидович Сайтиев, Chechen: Сайт КIант Бувайса) (born March 11, 1975 in Khasavyurt, Dagestan ASSR) is a Russian wrestler of Chechen heritage, who has won nine world-level gold medals in freestyle wrestling. He is widely considered the greatest freestyle wrestler of all time. He currently is an acting State Duma Deputy from Dagestan.

In 1992, Buvaisar left his hometown of Khasavyurt, Dagestan in order to train at a prestigious wrestling center in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Soon after graduating from the training center, Saitiev began his quest to represent Russia on the world stage. Buvaisar has been decorated with the Order of Friendship by the Russian president. His younger brother Adam Saitiev, also a wrestler, won gold in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Buvaisar's life philosophy has been heavily influenced by Nobel Prize-winning poet Boris Pasternak. Saitiev repeats the following poem before every match, and according to Buvaisar, the poem has defined his life both inside and outside of wrestling:

It is not seemly to be famous

Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all - this is creation,
And not - to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive-this only matters-

Alive and burning to the end.

— Boris Pasternak, My Sister Life

Быть знаменитым некрасиво.

Не это подымает ввысь.
Не надо заводить архива,
Над рукописями трястись.

Цель творчества самоотдача,
А не шумиха, не успех.
Позорно ничего не знача,

Быть притчей на устах у всех.

— Борис Пастернак, Сестра моя — жизнь

Saitiev has won nine world-level gold medals. He is a six-time world champion and a three-time Olympic champion. His senior-level international career began in 1994 and, to date, has continued on through the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. In thirteen years, he's entered eleven world championship tournaments, won nine world championship tournaments, and lost only two bouts.

In 1999, Buvaisar did not wrestle at the world championships. Instead his weight class was represented by his younger brother Adam, who won a gold medal. Saitiev also did not compete at the world championships in 2002. He lost to Magomed Isagadjiev at the 2002 Russian Nationals. Isagadjiev went on the win a silver medal at the world championships. In 2007 Saitiev was beat out for the Russian team by Makhach Murtazaliev, who went on to win the world title. According to media reports, Saitiev's training in 2007 was hampered by a neck injury