“As an immigrant when you show up, it’s pretty rough, you know? It’s very, very tough.” I didn’t have that family environment that most people have,” Cirkunov says. “All of a sudden you have a family structure where everyone’s doing their own thing, everybody’s trying to get by. Oleg and Olga split up less than two years after they immigrated, making home-Cirkunov’s solace from his struggles at school-an uncomfortable place to be. “I could tell that it was slowly eating him away. He couldn’t get a job anywhere,” Cirkunov says. And then everywhere he applies they tell him that he’s over-qualified. And then he comes to Canada, he reapplies for everything-new licenses, new qualifications, all these courses. “He was making really, really good money back home. Oleg, who was a successful power-plant engineer in Latvia, was forced to take a job as a security guard. His mother, Olga, worked long, tiring days on her feet as a hairstylist, struggling to build a clientele while speaking little to no English. Meanwhile, his parents weren’t doing well, either. That drove Cirkunov to isolate himself further. That’s when students began circulating a false rumour that he was homosexual, on top of more gossip that he was held back several years, spurred by the fact he was more physically developed than his peers. He didn’t comprehend enough English to navigate the situation. He remembers a social at his new school when a girl asked him to dance. Cirkunov had to start all over again.Ĭirkunov was deeply depressed and consumed with his struggles to fit in. Then, just as Cirkunov was beginning to accept his new reality, his father, Oleg, moved the family into a condominium near High Park, forcing his son to switch schools. He moped through his days, not speaking to anyone at school and sitting alone in his room most nights feeling sorry for himself. Cirkunov picked up the latter half of Grade 8 at Forest Hill Public School, but he didn’t understand a word of English, which made developing friendships impossible.
So, they immigrated to Canada, settling in a modest apartment in Toronto’s north end. They saw a better future for Misha outside Latvia.
I was kind of gravitating towards those circles.”Ĭirkunov’s parents, understandably, weren’t pleased. “Not tough guys like here in Canada, like hockey players or whatever. So I started hanging around with some really, really tough guys,” Cirkunov says.
“I was big, and I was into a lot of sports. He developed muscle very early, and as he ballooned he began running with the wrong crowds. But he was naturally bigger than all of his peers, growing to six-feet tall and 180 lb. He swam, played basketball, competed in judo. An accomplished practitioner of judo, wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the 29-year-old has broken off three consecutive victories since joining the UFC in 2015, and is now positioned to take the biggest step of his career.Ĭirkunov’s long, crazy journey started in Riga, Latvia, where he was born. Now, Canada is home, and Cirkunov is one of the best mixed martial artists in the nation. “It was like a comfort zone where, for the first time in a long time, I felt really, really good. “I almost had tears,” he says through his still-thick Russian-Latvian accent. This moment was a seminal one for Cirkunov. What he did know was a few throws and trips, and that drew him to an advertisement for a judo club he saw in a newspaper. He was walking into the double gymnasium at the North York YMCA 16 years ago as a recent Latvian immigrant who didn’t speak a word of English. He recognized the old, baggy gis, the worn rubber of the mats, the smell of sweat and tears and maybe a little blood. Misha Cirkunov felt at ease as soon as he stepped through the door.
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