“BAZARA 0 Fight Club IV” has added a technically significant grappling matchup to its September 12 event at Xiaomi Arena in Riga: Armands Zvirbulis vs. Misha Cirkunov! This fight will be a 6-minute submission-only grappling match at 100 kg, and it brings together two of the most accomplished Latvian grapplers of their generation.
Zvirbulis is a Latvian Olympian in freestyle wrestling, a 2011 World Championship fifth-place finisher and a European junior champion. Cirkunov, on the other hand, is a former UFC light heavyweight; not to mention a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and a judo black belt.
GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!
FACEBOOK | YOUTUBE | INSTAGRAM | TIKTOK
Armands Zvirbulis landed a fifth-place finish at the 2011 World Championships and first place at the 2007 European junior championships. He also represented Latvia at the 2012 London Olympic Games, where official Olympic records list him in men’s freestyle light-heavyweight competition. There, he finished 10th.
His career continued after the Olympic cycle. In 2019 he became president of the Latvian Wrestling Federation, but in 2025, left that role in order to focus fully on work with the Latvian Olympic Unit. Zvirbulis also took part in the 2022 Veterans World Championships in Bulgaria, where he finished second in the freestyle 100kg Veterans A division.
His opponent, Mikhail “Misha” Cirkunov, born in Riga and later based in Canada, became known internationally through professional MMA and the UFC; though even before his UFC rise, Cirkunov had already competed successfully in multiple grappling environments and eventually attracted UFC attention after strong regional MMA performances.
Cirkunov had won Canadian junior national titles in judo, freestyle wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling before deepening his Brazilian jiu-jitsu game. In 2008, he was the Pan Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi Championship winner in the adult black belt male super-heavy division, ahead of Andre Gusmao—a Renzo Gracie Academy black belt, IFL champion and UFC veteran, best known in MMA history as Jon Jones’ opponent in Jones’ UFC debut at UFC 87.
In the UFC, Cirkunov’s wins included submissions over Alex Nicholson, Ion Cutelaba, Nikita Krylov, Patrick Cummins and Jimmy Crute, as well as a first-round TKO victory over Daniel Jolly in his promotional debut. But Cirkunov’s UFC debut also has a special place in Latvian combat sports history: he was the first fighter representing Latvia to win in the UFC (as Jurijs Vauļins had competed first, but lost). Cirkunov was only the second Latvian fighter to ever sign with the UFC after Vauļins.
Cirkunov had won his first four UFC bouts and had been discussed as a possible future title contender, but his run eventually included difficult setbacks against high-level opposition such as Glover Teixeira, Johnny Walker, Ryan Spann, Krzysztof Jotko, Wellington Turman and Alonzo Menifield.
