Bekzod Abdurakhmonov

Bekzod Makhamadzhonovich Abdurakhmonov was born on 15 March 1990 in Tashkent. He is an Uzbek freestyle wrestler who went to the United States to study without speaking English, wrestling at Colby Community College and then at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, where he was an All-American in 2012. He was inducted into the Colby Community College Alumni Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Clarion University Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.

In 2014 he won the 70 kg gold medal at the Asian Games and a world championship bronze medal. In 2015 he won the Golden Grand Prix final in Baku. At the 2016 Rio Olympics he beat American Jordan Burroughs 11-1 but lost the bronze-medal match to Azerbaijan's Jabrayil Hasanov. In 2017 he won the 74 kg Asian Championships in New Delhi, beating Kyrgyzstan's Muslim Evloev in the final, after an earlier Asian title in 2015. In 2018 he won the Asian Games again and took a second world bronze in Budapest.

He won the 74 kg bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. At the 2024 Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament in Bishkek he earned a quota place for Uzbekistan at the Paris Games. Since 2014 he has been an assistant wrestling coach at Harvard University, and he also competes in mixed martial arts. He holds the title Honoured Sportsman of Uzbekistan and the Shuhrat medal.