Bahodir Jalolov spoke openly about the most difficult and turning points of his life in an interview on the MY5 TV program “Efirda To‘raxonov”.
According to the boxer, there was a time when he was close to quitting the sport entirely:
“In 2016, after losing at the Olympics, I wanted to quit boxing. I thought about doing another job. Because in 2017, at the World Championship in Hamburg, I also lost in the final. After my father passed away, I told my mother, ‘I will do another job now.’ My mother encouraged me, saying, ‘If God wills, everything will be fine, my son.’
My coach Tulkin also motivated me, saying, ‘You will still become a champion, you will be great.’ After that, I made a promise to myself: ‘If God wills, I will go to the 2020 Olympics and definitely become a champion.’
After that, I worked very hard. I trained three times a day and constantly worked on myself. Later, my friend and I went to America, to Miami. We went through promoters. There are good and bad promoters. We ended up working with a bad one and faced many difficulties.
To get to training, we walked 8 kilometers. We were paid 400 dollars a month, which was not enough to live in America. Often, we had to cook pasta and eat it.
One day, I was put into sparring. My opponent was a Cuban boxer. I beat him. Seeing me, he was surprised and thought, ‘Where did this guy come from?’ After that, my coach started taking me to training in his car.
We went through such difficult trials. In the end, thank God, we succeeded at the Olympics,” Jalolov shared.
