We might be on the verge of something historic | Worlds 2026 Day 8

Today's session, your list of athletes made in a battle or a combat is the first. Sort of proper training session of Akbar Jirayev. He is one of the most highly anticipated athletes at this World Championships and he competes on Friday. So we're very excited to see how he does. Yesterday he came in, muscle snatching 110, shaking things off. Since we spent that week with him, or 100 hours with him in Uzbekistan a month ago, he's been in a training camp in Turkey. Training's gone pretty well and now he's here now. From what I gather, he's supposed to be snatching about 180 kilos, clean and jerking 210. That's what I was told yesterday. We'll see what happens today. Yeah, those are the Icelandic guys. It's interesting for Akbar. He is extremely popular. People want to sit around and watch him and talk to him and take photos. Never before have I met somebody who is so averse and allergic to attention as him. He's very shy. He doesn't like people looking, he's a really lovely man but he is, you know, he doesn't like the fame in the same way that Carlos or, you know, Lashes, they've learned how to deal with out of handle being the center of attention. He's the center of attention and you'll notice he's in the most cornered platform in this entire training hall just getting away from everything. But yeah 182.10, I don't think he has any real competition at this world championships to be To be honest, I imagine both second and third attempts will be. He'll probably, he might open up for the win on his first clean and jerk. I'd love to see a 200 kilo snatch from him. But, you know, he's capable of 200 and something in the low 240s probably. Whether or not he'll do that, we don't know. You know, without the pressure, he would only be doing it to do something historic for the, you know, the memory of the fans. Maybe he will, maybe not, we don't know. Also, tomorrow... is the showdown at 95. Carlos Nassar versus Ali Epour versus Nagisa versus so many great 95s. That's going to be an insane battle. You don't want to miss that. Weightliftinghouse.tv Also, you can get up to 40% off at weightliftinghouse.com and you can get it at the Weightlifting House World Championship sale. The link for that is also down below. Let's check out the set. I don't know what you're talking about. One of the interesting things that you notice with Team Uzbekistan is how regimented and professional they are as a team right now for me they come across as one of the most professional teams in weightlifting you know arriving together the stretching like the the focus that they put on on the small details you know the warming up the every single repetition is like all of their energy on making it as perfect as possible they're not like casually rolling around on the floor they've got like a specific warm-up they're doing every time they know what the focus of the session is every repetition is like let's put our mind into what we're doing and be present with this moment um and it really shows i think on the platform a lot of the people here have never seen Akbar train or compete before some of the media are new and so i've sort of said to them like you'll be surprised you'll be impressed by you'll have never seen someone this big moving so perfectly before Not only is he the strongest in the category, he probably moves the best as well and that's why you get somebody who can do a 200kg snatch. So I just spoke to coach Bahram who's like the mastermind behind the Uzbek team. He used to be an athlete for Uzbekistan, then a more like regional coach and now the official coach. He's brought in lots of different assistant coaches, he's brought in like Bulgarian expertise, Iranian expertise to develop this new Uzbek system essentially. um and he just told me Akbar will do up to 170 if he feels good maybe a little bit more if he feels bad maybe a little bit less so we don't know it could be 160 it could be 180. they had a 12-hour travel day so we'll just see how he's looking and he'll go bosh up I'm starting to speak All of the boys in Uzbekistan, they like love the fact now. that Akbar is getting so much media attention right now. You know like someone in the crew like makes it and they bring everyone up. It's kind of how it feels like you can see Ergachev is like sneaking in with a camera getting some shots. He's looking around like so proud that there's one, two, three, four, five, seven or eight cameras on his boy Akbar. He's like yeah we're making it like in the global sense like Team Uzbekistan is on top right now. It's really nice there's no level of like He's getting all of this like we're all training just as hard. It's like no one of us has made it like one of us Has become mainstream and they all love it They all respect Akbar a lot for it and act like they're genuinely grateful to be like, you know Be there with him when he's getting all this attention All right. How do you want me to tell you? I don't know. I don't know. How much is it? But, it's funny, if you want to know who's your athlete's favourite athlete, you gotta come to the training hall and just see who everybody stops and watches. Right now, everybody's favourite athlete, is that quite right? 10 to 10. Looks decent, but it's still not really a challenging weight for him, so I can't really see whether he's in great shape or not. But definitely, at this time point, he's better than Gigatron. Yeah, because Gigatron is injured at this point. Hey, I'm Amreddino Sharafuddin. Oh, where are you going? Huh? Come here, close to the mic. Yeah, there we go. I am Amreddino Sharafuddin. Listen, I'm coming. And good training, hard training, and will be ready, you see. My snatch is crazy, and will you see in competition or tomorrow? Goodness me, what a session. I love it when a big session doesn't disappoint, and that one did not disappoint. Abdo Younes versus Jason Lopez, an instant classic. They've competed sort of against each other, but in separate competitions for the last year. We've watched them go back and forth. This was their first time meeting, and it wasn't my prediction. My money. Metaphorically, it was on Jason Lopez, Abdel Younes did it, he pulled it off. There were five snatch world records from 174 upwards. My boy Marin Robu had a snatch world record for a period of time, so thrilled for him. He lifted tremendously in the snatch, not so great in the clean and jerk. Jason Lopez called for a really harsh press out on the first lift. My personal opinion, even when I'm being a little bit more harsh and critical, that's a good lift every day of the week, so I felt bad from there. Really, in the snatch, he looked like he could have made 180, 181, too. I mean, even Abdo could have, but he had that one miss. The snatch portion, though, fantastic, separated by just a kilo. In the clean and jerk, I mean, Team Egypt played a blinder. Three for three. Was it 204, 209, or 8? 213. 213, we've never seen him do that before. He silenced the doubters with no elbow movement in any of his lifts. They were locked out. He left a marker of 3.89, 3.90, 3.90. He said, Jason, you've got to do 213. Jason came out, cleaned it, put it overhead, dropped it. Abdo Younes, I said it before, he acts like he's running out of time, but he's got plenty of it. Today, that tactic finally paid off. Abdo Younes, world champion at last. La próxima. That's not good.