It might be unfamiliar for now, but the name Shakil Injam (@indiancombatcoach), would be the topic of discussion for many in the coming days.
Shakil Injam, a Guwahati-born young man, is the founder of a popular MMA gym named, ‘Legacy Combat MMA & Fitness,’ (@legacycombatmma.) He is also a popular Martial Arts Critic on Youtube with over 3 million total views, known as Indian Combat Coach. He is a national level wushu Sanda athlete, a National level bodybuilder, powerlifter, An affiliated Chen style tai chi chuan teacher, A certified Strength, and conditioning coach, a certified sports nutritionist, and black belt in several disciplines of martial arts and participated in all fields of martial arts and fitness in the last 12 years.
The most important remark he made is his contribution towards the Indian Army to train their special forces in unarmed combat for guerrilla warfare and terrain based drills.
Being a teacher’s son, Shakil was very keen on his academics but never left his dream of being a fighter. His parents wanted him to be a UPSC aspirant, but his dreams of serving the nation were beyond that stream of grain. He faced several bullying incidents in his early teenage, which made him desperate to join a martial arts club, not to become an athlete but to learn self-defense. After 6 years of dedicated training in several clubs and in several disciplines, such as Shaolin Kung fu, Karate, Taekwondo, wing chun kung fu, Gymnastics, Muay thai, and Kick boxing; he finally decided to move to china for advanced training. He resided in Shaolin Temple to learn Shaolin Kung fu but eventually got motivated for Sanda or Sanshou fighting, which is also known as Chinese kickboxing. Then he moved to chenjiagou to learn Chen style tai chi chuan and Chinese wrestling called Shuai jiao. He practiced wrestling in the Akharas of Gurgaon. He also spent three months in Kerala to study Kalaripayattu, the ancient Indian martial art. He is also one of the pioneer athletes in popularising calisthenics in India.
He participated in numerous national events in kung fu, wushu, kick boxing, etc, and achieved sufficient medals for the state. Shakil was also a national-level bodybuilder and a fifth position holder in Junior Mr. India, organised by IFBB.
Looking at his achievements, he was invited to train Indian Army special units called as Ghatak Commandos, from the division level, in 2019 and has been associated with them since then. He has trained Ghataks from several regiments and also prepared our soldiers to represent in front of the Chinese soldiers in the joint military drill called “hand in hand”. For some certain level of security measures, he refrained from giving us more details about his association with the Armed forces.
He is also very vocal about the Ill practice of martial arts by many popular Martial arts figures of our country such as Shifuji Shaurya Bharadwaj, Vidyut Jamwal, Shifu Kanishka Sharma, etc. For which he was also featured by a popular American youtube channel called as, “Fight commentary breakdown”, naming him as Indian XuXiaodong.
With a physique of Greek god aesthetics, he was pretty close to achieving everything he dreamt of; but the tragedy struck with an unfortunate event. While participating in an Asian Games trial for Team India, held in Meerut, he met an accident, where he got a 3 inch deep cut on his ankle which stopped his training for many days and eventually met many more injuries. He was offered to participate in MFN by Dan Issac, also in SFL as a pro fighter, and in SOW as a commentator, but unfortunately he has to reject every opportunity he got due to his injuries. He is recovering Currently and is highly motivated for his upcoming journey in martial arts.
Apart from being a fighter, he is also an excellent coach with many national-level medal holders as his students. He leads a unique team of coaches with expertise in several martial arts such as Boxing, Kick Boxing, Grappling, Muay Thai, and Crossfit.
In conversation with Just Guwahati Things, Shakil said, “I never started my Gym to earn money. I would have done something else with the money I had, if I was really interested in that. My sole motive for starting Legacy Combat is to develop the culture of martial arts among our people and get as many international-level athletes as possible, from our state.”
He is soon going to retire from his amateur career and all ready to start playing full-time professional.
