Men's dispute: our judoists at the World Cup showed the best result in history

Budapest hosted the most successful World Judo Championship for the Russian national team. In individual tournaments, our athletes became the strongest in three weight categories and, despite the restrictions, were able to surpass the country's previous achievement at the world forum.

It has already happened that the Russian national team brought three gold medals from the World Cup in 2001, but there were fewer medals (three), plus then one person won two gold medals at once — Alexander Mikhailin. In Budapest, Russian judoka (they fought there as representatives of the International Judo Federation) won five medals: gold — Timur Arbuzov, Matvey Kanikovsky and Inal Tasoev, bronze — Ayub Bliev and Arman Adamyan.

Timur Arbuzov won in the weight category up to 81 kg. Timur is 21 years old, he hails from Kropotkin, Krasnodar Territory, started practicing judo at the age of 4 under the guidance of his father. In total, his father Denis has four sons, Timur is the eldest.

"He has a very good body, and he's very plastic,— Denis Arbuzov said in an interview with Kuban 24 TV channel in January this year. He is even called the cat man in the judo world. There are situations where a person has to fall, and he still manages to throw from there. God definitely endowed him with talent.

2025 is a victorious year for Arbuzov: he won the Grand Slam tournament in Tashkent in early March, the European Championship at the end of April, and now the World Championship.

Arbuzov also has a particularly important rival, three—time world champion and three-time European champion Tato Grigalashvili. Timur reached the World Cup finals for the second time in a row, and in 2024 he lost to Georgia. In 2025, they met twice - in the finals of the European Championship and the World Cup, and Arbuzov won twice.

Matvey Kanikovsky is also an athlete who is still very young — he is 23. A Muscovite. In 2023, he became the bronze medalist of the European Championship, and in 2024 he took first place at the Euro. He won five Grand Slam tournaments. In Budapest, Matvey defeated another Russian, Arman Adamyan, in the semifinals, and in the final defeated Japanese Dota Arai, who was still very young (20 years old), but already quite titled.

Finally, Inal Tasoev became a two-time world champion. In 2023, they shared the first place with Teddy Riner. In extra time, the judges mistakenly did not count the Ossetian's effective action, and then gave the victory to Ringer. However, then the International Judo Federation recognized the mistake of the judges and awarded Inal gold. Later, Tasoev said that he did not consider himself a full-fledged world champion, stressing that he would definitely win the 2025 World Cup on his own.

Tasoev was expected to become Riner's main competitor at the 2024 Olympics, but Russian judoka did not participate in the Paris Games. And Inal came to Paris anyway to support the athletes he knew. But Riner did not compete at the 2025 World Cup. The five-time Olympic champion explained this by saying that he had not fully recovered from elbow surgery.

Tasoev first beat Turk Oleg Ergin, then defeated Muzaffarbek Turoboev, and then defeated Russian Tamerlan Bashaev, the bronze medalist at the 2021 Olympics, who stopped Riner himself in Tokyo. In the semifinals, Inal won against Temur Rakhimov (Tajikistan), and in the final against Guram Tushishvili, the 2018 world champion and silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympics. This was the seventh fight between them: Tasoev won six of them, lost in one.

Tasoev still has his whole career ahead of him, although by the age of 27 he had already won everything except the Olympics. Two World Championships, three European Championships (2021, 2024, 2025), 10 Grand Slam tournaments. Now he is one of the most successful martial artists in Russia in general.

Tasoev has been training for several years in St. Petersburg at the famous Turbostroitel judo club (Inala coaches are Mikhail Rakhlin and Irbek Aylarov). He says that this is the best place to train, not only in Russia, but also in the world.

"Russia has everything to become a champion," he said in the documentary "Inal Tasoev. Petersburg vibe". — There are no such conditions anywhere in the world, nowhere. I've never seen better conditions in my life. You come to the gym and there are 2000 squares of clean tatami. Even in Japan, even in France, there is no such thing. If you could see the conditions under which I trained with Ruslan Gassiev, the weightlifting coach... This is crazy! By the way, hello to him! There was nothing there. Nevertheless, the world and European champions came out of there.

It's not often that big sports magazines in America or Europe write about a Russian athlete. So, on the eve of the World Cup, the French weekly Le magazine L'Équipe devoted as many as seven pages to Tasoev — he specially sent his journalist to collect money in Benidorm, Spain. The article mentions the mountains of Ossetia, Vladimir Putin, Anatoly Rakhlin and, of course, Teddy Riner, for whom Tasoev is the main threat. The title is "l'epouvantail Russe". epouvantail literally translates as scarecrow, but in this case, the word means a person who is afraid. The Russian monster.

Russian women, on the other hand, did not show themselves so strongly — not a single medal. There was also no reward in the team tournament. Nevertheless, thanks to the excellent performance of the men, the World Championships held in Budapest can be considered very successful for Russian judo.