Igor Vovchanchyn

Igor Yaroslavovych Vovchanchyn (vov-CHUN-chin, Ukrainian: Ігор Ярославович Вовчанчин; born August 6, 1973) is a retired Ukrainian mixed martial artist and kickboxer, who competed in early no holds barred MMA contests. After making his professional MMA debut in 1995, he won nine openweight mixed martial arts tournaments (back when tournament format required 3 to 4 consecutive bare-knuckle fights during the same night), 3 superfights, holds the second longest unbeaten streak in MMA (at 37 fights,) and is the second most successful MMA fighter ever by number of wins achieved by way of knockout. Vovchanchyn has an MMA tournament named after him, the Igor Vovchanchyn Cup. The son of Kladiya (née Michaylovna) and Yaroslav Iosifovich Vovchanchyn, Igor Yaroslavovych Vovchanchyn was born in the settlement of Fesky, in the Zolochevsky district of Soviet Ukraine. Vovchanchyn said that growing up, he caused trouble and got into street fights and different kinds of mischief. Due to his antics, there was a popular story in circulation that whenever Vovchanchyn became upset the villagers would ring a bell in the center of town which would alarm everyone to stay in their houses until he had calmed down. Vovchanchyn later stated that this story was just a joke, although there was a bell in the center of town. At age 17, he moved to Kharkiv and began competing in Track and Field, running the 100m dash and throwing the discus. Due to his love for fighting, he later moved to Boxing under trainer Oleg Ermakov. In 1993, he met Eugenia Borschevskaya, general secretary of the All Eurasian Kickboxing Federation. After taking up Kickboxing, he later went to Denmark to compete at the World Kickboxing Amateur Championships with the Ukrainian national team, where he became the world champion that same year. Vovchanchyn also won the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) kickboxing championship in 1994.