National athlete Kadir Yıldırım stated that he was happy to be the first Turkish athlete to win consecutive gold medals in this category with the consecutive championships he achieved at the WAKO Seniors Kickboxing World Championship, and said, “I thank God for making me feel this pride.”
National kickboxer Kadir Yıldırım became the champion in the +91 kilo low kick category at the WAKO Seniors Kickboxing World Championship held in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The national athlete made statements about the 2 consecutive world championships he won.
Stating that he started the tournament as the top seed because he was the last world champion, Yıldırım said, “I passed the preliminary round by bye. Then I met my Lithuanian opponent in the quarter-finals. In the first round of our match with the Lithuanian athlete, I received a reverse blow and fell into a knockdown situation. Then, after the count, the match started again. The opponent put pressure on me again to take advantage of the situation and the referee counted once more. If the referee were to count one more time in the first round, the match would automatically end. No matter what the steps are to realize all my dreams. You have to win to go to the next round. Our next step was our Lithuanian opponent. Even though I couldn’t balance the match very well, there is a picture where there was 1 minute and 53 seconds left in the match. In the last round, I lost with a score of 7-0 in one referee and 3-0 in another. Believe me, I don’t have the answer to the question of how I managed it. “I think it’s about belief. After all, you can’t win a match unless one side raises its hand. With this awareness and this will, we turned the match around by showing a very high performance in the third round, and at the same time, we passed the first round and went to the semi-finals.”
“I SAID, IF WE WIN THIS MATCH, WE ARE CHAMPIONS”
Stating that the fight against the Lithuanian athlete he faced in the quarter-finals was the most critical fight of the organization, Yıldırım said, “I evaluated it that way even before the match. Even while talking to our loved ones, we said that if we win this match, we will be champions, God willing. I used these sentences because I thought he was my most difficult opponent because he was someone I had not played with before. Then we faced the Pole in the semi-finals. I had the chance to follow the Polish’s match in the previous round for a short time. “I knocked out another Polish player at the 2023 World Championship. With the self-confidence he gave me, I showed a very aggressive and tough game to my Polish opponent. As soon as the first round started, there was no blood flowing from my opponent’s nose. I fought so aggressively that I finished the match in the first round and went to the final.”
“THANKS TO GOD WHO HAS GIVEN ME THIS PRIDE”
Stating that he predicted that he would face a Croatian opponent in the final after passing the semi-finals, Kadir Yıldırım said, “After beating the Polish player, the Croatian on the other side beat his Kyrgyz opponent and became my opponent in the final. I had defeated my Croatian opponent in the final at the world championship held in Portugal in 2023. I won there with overwhelming superiority. Here too, I went into the match with a very high self-confidence. Because I played my semi-final match right from the ringside.” He was watching me closely and I gave him a very scary moment in the match where I beat him. I knew this was going to happen. I showed a very aggressive game against him. I knocked out my opponent with the first high kick at the beginning of the second round. This is the first athlete in the history of kickboxing to win consecutive world championships. “I thank God for giving me this pride. I can express this clearly to you because I felt it fully there,” he said.
“THE SENTENCE THAT MY DAUGHTER SAID BEFORE THE MATCH, ‘YOU WILL WIN, DAD’, WAS IN MY EARS”
Sharing his feelings about the moment when he turned the fight in his favor 1 minute and 53 seconds before the end of the last round in the match against his Lithuanian opponent in the quarter-finals, the national athlete said, “I must also say that the opponent was serious and we were aware of his seriousness before the match started. Everyone, including me, our teammates and team coaches, were aware of the situation. But in the end, I came here as the last world champion. We were also assertive. Maybe I was someone who could cause more fear than the opponent. But the match did not start as we wanted. First After the knockdown, when the referee counted to 8 and called me back to the ring and I took my guard, I thought of maybe wanting to finish my last year as a world champion in the national team and quit. I always tell my athletes, I know very well, no matter what the score is, whether you are ahead or behind, 20-0, 30-0. Even if you are down 50-0, sometimes winning or losing depends on a single punch. There is a fact that I know very well and that I try to impose on my athletes. The match was going on, I was on my feet after all. Even though I was nervous, I came back with these feelings in the match. Believe me, the second round was not very effective. But in the third round, I think it was something that surprised all the officials there. It happened. Everyone was very appreciative after the match. I accomplished what was said to be impossible. During the last round, many people were sitting in the stands. The thing that made me come back was the scenario I had in my mind or my child. Maybe the thought of becoming the world champion for the last time was the factor that brought me back to the match and won the match. “Believe me, I don’t know exactly how it happened.
“PERHAPS, THOSE TWO RAKATS BROUGHT THE PRAYER CHAMPIONSHIP”
Yıldırım talked about an incident that took place in the quarter-final match, 4-5 competitors before his match, and included the following sentences:
“So to speak, we can call it a power of faith. Actually, there is another story. We were in the warm-up area, I had performed the noon prayer. I was wearing my shorts, all my equipment was on me. Now I had 4-5 matches left. At that time, Konya Provincial Representative Mehmet Güçlü was my coach in the ring. He was again with Mevlüt Aker. He was a coach with whom we prayed together in last year’s European championship. He said to me, ‘Kadir, afternoon prayer. Did you perform your prayer?’ he said. ‘Sir, I performed the noon prayer but I did not perform the afternoon prayer. I said, ‘I’m dressed now.’ I thought I would pray after the match. Then I said to myself, ‘Why should I pray after the match? There is time, how many minutes will it take?’ I immediately put on a pair of sweatpants, performed my ablution and performed my prayer. Maybe I became a champion because of this power. I really don’t know where the energy in that third round came from. I may have a child, I may have a family, but perhaps it was those two rakaats of prayer that I performed there. As an athlete who became the world champion at this age and at this weight, at the highest age in history, I am unique in the world in this sense. It is a great pride for me to be the only athlete to win consecutive world championships in Türkiye. But underneath this there are very high spiritual feelings. This job isn’t just about punching and kicking. Because there are other factors that can increase a person’s performance by up to 16-17 percent. For me, these factors increased my performance and brought the world championship.”
“EVERYTHING CAN CHANGE WITH ONE PUNCH, ONE KICK”
The 38-year-old national athlete emphasized that he did not give up despite being behind in points against his Lithuanian opponent shortly before the end of the match, and said, “When it comes to the strategy part, my training level is very decisive, especially in the first matches. I am an athlete who trains really well. I am a training freak, so to speak. I take good care of myself, I pay great attention to my nutrition. Everyone knows this very well. While creating the strategy in the match, I knew that the opponent was strong and had a high technical potential. As a result of that uneasiness, I made that blow.” “I think one of the reasons for this bad start was that the anxiety was reflected in the match. In my comeback, I converted the score with 1 minute and 54 seconds left in the match. Even if the difference was 26-0, everything could change with a single punch and a single kick. I continued my fight this way because I knew this fact. Of course, the basis of all this is experience. As experience increases, such returns and correct decisions improve.”