I will begin with that you don't even realize how difficult Igor's road to this title was. In my opinion this is the toughest battle Igor has had to fight in his entire eventful life so far. And the difficulty isn't in conducting the research, describing it, documenting it. The hardest part was something else!

Well-known, olympic and “traditional” sports disciplines have had their “theorists” (so the employees of different physical education academies that specialize in the whole scientific “setup” of a sport) since the 1940s.

For example, weightlifting. The methodology of this discipline is written out in kilometers-worth of book pages, academic texts, theoretical reseach documentation. Athletics... every step of a long jumper, on the run-up, has a thousand of descriptions, Masters theses, PhD theses and postdocs.

The representatives of this “academic” clique, docents, PhDs, professors, they are all very delicate about their beloved sports.

They are not willing to enthusiastically welcome someone who presents to them a completely new sport and publishes their research, theories, conclusions...

What can interest an old professor who spent half of his academic life analyzing the weight bar's trajectory in the first phase of snatching? I know guys like that, I know what I'm saying.

Igor had to get the title of MSc in Physical Education first.

Now LISTEN! (Or read, for a fact.)

During late 1980s the Moscow Sports Institute accepted a candidate who WAS NOT a weightlifter for the weightlifting major for the first time since the establishment of the institute (and the beginnings of this school reach as far as the first years of USSR).

That's not all! He didn't even WANT to be a weightlifter!

He was popularizing armwrestling and that was all he wanted to talk about.

The studies in Moscow were concluded with a MSc thesis in 2012. The title was:

“A comparative analysis of strength training of two top competitors: Andrey Pushkar and Denis Tsyplenkov, based on their starts in Professionals World Cup. Comparison and analysis of training plans and results.”

Камаев Олег Иванович – the supervisor of Igor's thesis

Dmytro Bezkorovainyi – helped with the work and organization

The process of preparing the PhD thesis took a few years. Publications and documentation of unaided research were necessary as well as many other formalities.

Actually, since the very beginning of his armwrestling adventure, Igor had the tendencies to look for methods of measuring strength, endurance and speed of competitors. He persistently kept pushing in this direction. His other passion is constructing training equipment dedicated for all aspects of our sport.

The topic of the PhD thesis is (roughly):

“The usage of innovative training equipment in the training process of medium and high level athletes.”

Don Mazurenko

When did we start calling Igor “Don Mazurenko”? I'm not sure... but now everyone already knows him as Don. This is obviously a reference to the famous professional boxing promotor, Don King. I don't personally know Don King but I'm sure that he doesn't own a MSc or a PhD degree in any discipline!

This is why I suggest calling Igor “Mazurenko PhD” from now on.

Congratulations Igor!

I will envy you! But it's all good, you do you!

Once upon a time... I think in 1999. From left: PeSzy, Igor Mazurenko, Artur Lewandowski (during that time he helped with the development of armwrestling a lot) in Warsaw, after a visit in the headquarters of monthly “Muscle”. I asked then: what is this “armwrestling”? Source: probably the redactors of “Muscle”.