The name Murran would be an unfamiliar one to most Indians on a map. Murran is a village that lies about six kilometers away from the town of Pulwama in South Kashmir, and all that people know about it is that it has apple orchards. All this changed in due course of time and very abruptly because of a boy from this village, who, at some point of his teenage years, decided to take up fighting as his career in a sport unknown to most of his neighbors.
Owais Yaqoob was born in 1998 in Murran, and Owais had a first exposure to combat sports through taekwondo, which he started learning around 2012 and 2013. He then managed to build up an impressive amateur career by winning a number of national level medals in taekwondo and other disciplines, all organized by Jammu and Kashmir Sports Council, which may not have been a part of mainstream news but certainly helped Owais gain experience. By all accounts, Owais won well over a dozen national level medals in the process, which turned out to be very important when he switched disciplines.
The jump came in 2017 when Owais decided to take on the challenge of mixed martial arts. As per his own admission at a later date, it was certainly not an easy decision to take up in the challenging environment that prevailed at that time. There were great disturbances in Kashmir and choosing the career path of the sports where there was practically no structured format for conducting professional matches and no precedence of a Kashmiri wrestler coming out successful on the international platform was certainly not easy. It is interesting to note that Owais has been quoted as saying that he took a lot of inspiration from Khabib Nurmagomedov, which definitely makes some sense in light of the path that his career has taken him thus far. By around 2015, even before getting into MMA, Owais started a Lion’s Den Martial Arts Academy in Pulwama, which has trained over two hundred youths from the area in the field of martial arts.
Before making the leap to the pro scene, Owais managed to take three amateur MMA national championships. This was indicative of true talent, yet it provided no inkling of the speed with which his career would move forward on the international scale. However, Owais’s first fight in the MMA could hardly be called the way a dream start should go for a fighter. Fought at Matrix Fight Night 11 in New Delhi in 2023, it ended in Owais’s submission in the third round by Neeraj Panghal. A defeat like this for a fighter that is expected to become one of the first from his region to try his hand at professional MMA would be enough to make him give up his aspirations altogether.
This did not happen. Owais reacted to his setback by improving his technique, namely his wrestling and ground game. To work on them, he chose to go to Dagestan in Russia for training in the area that is famous for having one of the hardest wrestling cultures around. This move led Owais to train at the American Kickboxing Academy in California under the guidance of Team Khabib and Javier Mendez. What is even more interesting is the fact that Owais found himself training with Khabib Nurmagomedov personally, the champion who had inspired Owais to become a fighter in the first place. According to some reports in October 2025, Khabib himself praised the efforts of Owais and stated that the young fighter had a lot of potential like his cousin Usman Nurmagomedov did before he became a Bellator lightweight champion.
After that, he started racking up victories on a consistent basis. After beating Shetty Pratik Sadashiv and then Azim Mokhlis via unanimous decision at MFN 14 in March 2024, Owais went on to defeat Amanzhol Khaisa in Kazakhstan at Naiza FC 70 in December 2024. In April 2025, he added another win via technical knockout in the second round at Veswa Fight Championship 4. However, it was all leading up to the highlight of his career up until that point: On 19 September 2025, Owais defeated Ian Paul “Choco” Lora – an undefeated Filipino fighter at BRAVE CF 98 in Zhengzhou, China. After just over three minutes into the match, Owais managed to get a takedown, pummeling Lora with a series of punches, causing him to submit. This victory made Owais the first fighter from Jammu and Kashmir to get a win under BRAVE Combat Federation – a well-known MMA organization which operates outside of the UFC – making him a source of immense pride for the people of the region.
This was followed by a first-round win over the new opponent of Zakharuddin Gafurov in BRAVE CF 103 that took place in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, in December 2025, a win that improved his professional record to five wins and a single loss while earning him the BRAVE CF Breakout Fighter of the Year for 2025. He met with his greatest challenge when on 1 August 2026, he met Delyan Georgiev in BRAVE CF 107 that took place in Burgas, Bulgaria. Georgiev was the two-time IMMAF amateur world champion and had never lost a professional bout, training under UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria. Owais won the bout via first-round technical knockout and gave Georgiev his first-ever defeat and also increased his professional record to six wins and a single loss.
Outside the ring, Owais is emerging as a prominent personality in Kashmir, being an ambassador of a cement brand for the region, along with getting accolades such as being invited by the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, and lauded on his accomplishments and further success. It must be mentioned that in a region where the story of sports has been all about cricket in the past and football and wrestling in the recent past, Owais Yaqoob comes as a fresh addition, as an athlete of the sport of boxing in which he trains with the best boxers in the state of California, carries the tricolour in Guangzhou to Bukhara to Burgas, and gradually becomes a part of the world title talk.
Writer is a student and columnist from Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir and can be mailed at mdmuslimbhat@gmail.com
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