American expert Luke Thomas spoke about whether he has Shavkat Rakhmonov such a fan base in Kazakhstan as Manny Pacquiao in the Philippines.
“At one time, MMA websites suddenly started covering boxing because Manny Pacquiao was at his peak. A real avalanche of traffic hit the sites—there had never been so much traffic before, and it came directly from the Philippines. Will there be something similar with Shavkat Rakhmonov and Kazakhstan? I think he's pretty far from that because there was really something special about Pacquiao. Although in the comments - even on my videos - there are always a lot of flags of Kazakhstan and thousands of people writing in the Kazakh language, because now he is really popular and is the main figure in MMA in this country. It has the potential to conquer the entire market. And it really reminds us of what happened with Pacquiao in the Philippines.”