Raivis Naglis is a Latvian athlete known for his achievements in both kickboxing and Muay Thai. At just 19, Naglis has already raked in multiple Baltic IFMA Championship wins and seized WAKO European and World Cups, titled as a WKN European champion and about to make his MMA debut at “Milžu Cīņas” taking place in 16th of November.
Raivis has gained massive social media recognition for both his skills in combat sports and efforts as a coach and online fitness mentor—he offers personalized training programs, focusing on consistency, providing custom workout plans and ongoing support to clients worldwide.
You’re a back-to-back beast! Last fight you had was October 7th or 2023, against Raivo Aukstikalnis. Why the long break?
I’m going into MMA. I started preparing for “Milžu Cīņas”. I’m not ready yet, but I will be. It’s going to be my MMA debut. Right after my last fight, I started trying some ground game and grappling. It was difficult initially, since I felt like a beginner again. Guys who were 20 kilograms lighter than me could easily put me in a lock. It’s better now; I just have to start putting two and two together.
When I was young, I lived in a very bad area in England. My dad sent me into boxing, but asides from one fight, nothing really notable happened. I came to Latvia, and at the age of 13, started being coached by Timurs Gaļejevs. Now that was serious—two months later I was put in a ring for my first fight. I won by knockout. I liked it. Since then I haven’t really missed a single training session. When I was 13-16, I got up at 4:30 in the morning, trained before school, went to school, slept at school… Then on to the second training, and home to sleep again. That’s how I achieved all my first spots in those championships.
All of your videos mention the finer details. Tell us about the little things and their power!
Fighting is a game of millimeters—whether you get socked in the jaw or not. Your stance is very important. It matters which leg has more weight on it, or how correctly that weight shifts from leg to leg. Your form and posture determines your balance, your balance determines how fast and how hard you can hit. The basics have to be there, always.
How do you usually start working with someone who is not physically fit?
To be fair… I don’t usually get people who aren’t. I don’t really train in person and put more focus on online coaching. My target audience is not exactly beginners, and rather amateurs who already know how that game is played. I don’t have many beginners approaching me, but I’m still open to that as well. A beginner usually won’t understand the nuances that I talk about and demonstrate in my videos. A beginner wants to know how to hit someone right away.
For my clients, I start with a monthly plan. We have a weekly call, where we go over their progress. After each workout, they send me videos of their drills, punching the bag, sparring. Then I analyze it, mention the mistakes, give them more drills.
Isn’t it easier to do in real life?
It is—it’s much easier. But doing it online is cheaper for the clients. If it’s €50 for one session in person, it’s €200 for the whole month online. It’s better for them and it’s easier for me, since I can organize everything at home and don’t have to go anywhere. This approach is definitely better if I have to combine my job with preparing for my own fights. But… things happen. Recently, there was a guy from Greece—he came in for a week, did his training and disappeared. Then he messaged me saying he’d pay for my flight to Greece to train in person. I think there are only two clients that I currently prepare for fights.
What do you do outside of fighting and training others?
Building my personal brand on Instagram. You can’t make decent money by just fighting, it’s all about your brand and personality. Coaching is my baseline. With my achievements, I can stick to it and make money with it. Without my fights, I would definitely go into the social media side of business because that’s what I’m good at. Attracting attention, understanding the algorithm—it all seems very interesting.
I only started building my brand six months ago. Used all the money I had saved for courses and mentors. You can learn a lot, but if you don’t actually put in real work yourself, you won’t get anywhere. After about 30 videos, I started to understand what worked and what didn’t. Somehow, the algorithm liked me a lot. It seemed a little suspicious, so I decided to try the same approach with other accounts and in other spaces. One Jiu-Jitsu guy got over 20,000 followers in a month and a half, while another boxer also went viral, with 4 million views. You have to build the content in a way that also helps build the brand in the long term.
What are your future branding plans?
It’s important to stick to something, one thing, especially at the beginning. Any brand needs to have a base. Mine, for example, is educational content. Then there is motivational and entertaining content, too. Of course, you have to do a bit of everything. From time to time, I also tend to weave in the entertaining bits.
What I’m going for now are Sam Sulek-style vlogs. Starting Monday, my whole life is going to be training for the fight event, so vlogs could be interesting; seeing what the lifestyle of a professional fighter looks like.
I have a lot of followers, but my brand isn’t that strong yet, and this would really help. It’s impossible to create a good brand in six months with the short videos I have. For example, Daņiks has less followers, but his brand is strong because people feel like they know him personally—he spends a lot of time streaming, drops bits of his life in the Lucky Punch Telegram group. I’m afraid of cameras in general, so it’s not easy to record myself. [laughs]
Are there other notable content creators like you in the Latvian scene?
Marats Jankovskis from my team is following in my footsteps. We started creating content around the same time. He has a slightly different style, more of a vlog type. In 2022, I think I was the first person to win the World Kickboxing Championship, but I’m pretty sure I was the first person to win the “Best Fighter” title. I was given a huge trophy for being the best among everyone in the championship.
Just this year, about two weeks ago, Marats won the same championship and got the same title. It’s a huge victory for our coach and for Latvia in general to have two fighters, one after the other, who amass such success.
