CNN
 — 

Ibragim Ibragimov’s latest victory over Kenny Mokhonoana kept alive his unbeaten start to professional MMA fighting and his status as one of the most exciting prospects in the sport. But in the hours after the win, the 20-year-old was quick to praise all the help he received in his preparations.

Ibragimov posted a photo on his Instagram of his training staff in Dubai, a group which included two of the greatest MMA fighters ever in Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev.

Perhaps it is no surprise that Ibragimov has had such success – he is 9-0 in his blossoming career with his sights set on the top – when he has such legends in his corner.

Ibragimov is the latest in the production line of mixed martial arts talent to come out of Dagestan, Russia, with Nurmagomedov and Makhachev acting as figureheads and role models for the new generation.

For a region with a population of just over three million – smaller than Los Angeles – it has become renowned for churning out top-level fighting talent, famous for their wrestling abilities and never-say-die attitude.

Ibragimov – who fights in the Professional Fighters League (PFL) – is part of the most recent generation of Dagestani fighters who are taking over the sport, and he says that for he and compatriots, fighting is a way of life, not just a profession.

“In Dagestan, guys really want to be fighters. In the whole of Europe, there’s not many guys who really want to be fighters,” Ibragimov told CNN Sports. “They just pretended like they are fighters. They want to be like fighters. They want to be like someone.

“But in Dagestan, there’s so many guys that really want to be fighters. Not all (European fighters). I’m not speaking for all of them, but I’d say like 30% or 50% of the guys, they don’t really want to be there. They just go in there for a hype and stuff like that, for Instagram.”

While fighting might be a walk of life for some, it’s more than that for many Dagestanis.

Michael Lyubimov, a famed MMA coach who has worked with many Dagestani fighters including Nurmagomedov, explained that when he often first encounters athletes from the Russian republic upon their arrival in the US, they are already vastly experienced.

Lyubimov – who is general manager of the Jackson Wink MMA Academy in New Mexico, renowned for its production of MMA talent – says that many young Russians take up fighting out of “despair from a young age.”

“Back where they come from, there’s absolutely nothing. A lot of these guys that come here, I mean, they fought since they’re like six years of age,” Lyubimov – who was born in Moscow before moving to the US as a youngster – told CNN.

“By the time they get to the UFC or obtaining these big promotions or come to America, they have over 200 fights and stuff.”

He added: “There’s no other option. There are cauliflower ears everywhere. It’s just who they are. It’s in the culture, engraved in them.”

Lyubimov also highlights the faith of the fighters from the region as a reason for their success, with many of them practicing Muslims. That means they often don’t drink or party and choose instead to focus on their craft.

The combination of those factors breeds a relentlessness in Dagestani fighters, according to Lyubimov. He recounts an athlete once telling him that he “will die in there before anything happens.”

Many fighters from the region will put their bodies through significant hardship to sign with big-money promotions, often waiting until they’ve inked deals before undergoing the necessary treatment to heal their ailments.

Lyubimov highlights to CNN Sports the journey of Ismail Israilov, from neighboring Chechnya, who recently won a fight after dislocating his shoulder in the first round. Before coming to the US, Israilov had been in a truck accident in which he almost lost his hand and, at the age of 24, has over 200 street fights to his name.

When Lyubimov asked Israilov what his upbringing was like back in Russia, the Chechen detailed how he came to have the resilience he now displays in the octagon.

“‘My whole life was like, you have a piece of bread in your backpack, and you drive for like an hour and a half to wrestling practice, and sometimes you can’t make it because it’s so far away or whatever, so we’d just fight on the street and practice on the pavement,’” Lyubimov recounts Israilov saying.

“‘We live in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. You look one way and there’s nothing there, you look the other way and there’s nothing there. All we have left is to fight.’”

During his time as part of Nurmagomedov’s coaching team, Lyubimov spent plenty of hours in the gym with the former UFC great, in both the US and his native Dagestan.

Compared to the current commercial gyms he works in now, the centers in Dagestan are vastly different environments with their hyper-focus on discipline, says Lyubimov.

“In Dagestan, gyms are government funded or recreational where people can come in. A lot of it is somewhat free, to a certain extent, until, of course, they make it to the big level where they start paying coaches and they’re like at a higher level, professional level,” he said.

“But at the beginning level, most of it is free. That’s why if you see Khabib when he walks into the room, or when Abdulmanap (Nurmagomedov’s father) would walk in into the room, all the fighters get up, they line up, they bow down, they’re quiet, they don’t talk, they’re always on time, they don’t talk back to elders, they have absolute major respect.

“If you show disrespect to an elderly person or coach or whoever, your peers will put you in place and you can literally get slapped like by a coach and you will be quiet about it and you stand there and take the criticism and them yelling at you if you’re being a dumbass.”

That rugged upbringing builds character and toughness. For Lyubimov, this sets the perfect platform from which to build a career.

When Lyubimov starts working with Dagestani fighters, it is often a case of refining their skills rather than adding more to their repertoire.

“Obviously America is Mecca for making the name for yourself, right?” he explains. “The lights are much brighter when they hit the American promotions. So, it’s just about teaching the composure, keeping emotions under check, and refining the skills.

“It’s teaching them how to adapt and how to just refine their skills in general, just making better fighters, understand the game better, understand the rules better, understand what to expect better, get them to deal with medicals, with fight preparations, with weight cutting. The diet, the weight cuts, everything because they do it one way over there. They come here, then they have to kind of relearn, or learn new things.”

The golden example of having to adjust to the American system was Nurmagomedov, who arrived in the US as a little-known prospect and blossomed into the biggest name in the sport.

His rise to prominence in the UFC was the jumping-off point for Dagestani dominance across the Western MMA scene.

Between his grappling skills, undefeated record and his customary wearing of Dagestan’s traditional papakha headpiece in the ring, Nurmagomedov became the hottest topic in the UFC despite not getting involved in the war of words which often previews fights or helps build rivalries between competitors.

His popularity grew to a previously unseen level through his rivalry with Conor McGregor, and then he retired a few years later. Lyubimov, who helped train Nurmagomedov during his heyday, said that the fighter understood that he needed to engage in sparring matches to continue to build his profile.

Since retiring in 2020, Nurmagomedov has transitioned into a mentor for the next generation of Dagestani fighters. He has had a hands-on effect on the burgeoning career of Makhachev, who is the No. 1 ranked pound-for-pound fighter at the moment and the current UFC lightweight world champion.

Elsewhere in the UFC, another Dagestani – Magomed Ankalaev – became UFC light heavyweight champion in March, while there are other world champions in MMA competitions around the world from the Russian region.

Before his most recent fight in January, Ibragimov trained with Nurmagomedov and Makhachev in Dubai and says the experience in the gym with two of MMA’s luminaries and his Dagestani “brothers” was formative for his burgeoning career.

“When you train in Khabib’s gym, and then, especially when he’s in there controlling you, there’s no limits,” he told CNN Sports. “It’s like sometimes he doesn’t even set the timer for training. And then we just train non-stop. We just roll nonstop, until he says stop.”

Ibragimov explained that a young Dagestani’s MMA journey is made that much easier because the previous generation has already walked that path and is around to give advice where needed. “They already showed us the road that we have to follow,” he said.

Ibragimov – who moved to Manchester, England, as a youngster and has siblings who are part of the Manchester United academy – has a long journey ahead of him in his MMA career. But in Nurmagomedov, Makhachev and other Dagestani fighters, he’s got the perfect role models showing him the way to the top.

CNN
 — 

The NFL draft is broadcast live on television every year as millions tune in and hundreds of thousands more attend in person to revel in the hoopla of it all.

It’s a far cry from the event’s humble beginnings, when the player picked first didn’t even know it was happening and soon walked away from the game without ever earning a cent.

There are no tackles or touchdowns, but the draft has become one of the biggest sports events of the year, because the fans know that a three-day event in April could impact the fortunes of their teams for years to come. Two-hundred-fifty-seven players will be drafted this week in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and anyone chosen in the first round – which begins at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday – will be set for life with guaranteed multi-million-dollar contracts. It was all very different in the first year of the draft back in 1936 when just 81 players were selected through nine rounds in the inaugural draft.

There was little doubt that University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger would go first that year. At 6-foot tall and 195 pounds, the standout player of his class had just received the first ever Heisman Trophy and been named as the Chicago Tribune’s Big 10 player of the year.

“He played offense, defense and special teams for Chicago,” explained Landon Bundy, the school’s director of sports information and promotions, to CNN. “He pretty much never came off the field and he played every single position there was on defense.”

Bundy said that Berwanger was also the team’s kicker, so he’d often score a touchdown and then kick the extra point himself.

“In his Heisman Trophy campaign, it looks like he passed for 405 yards and ran for 577 yards,” Bundy said. “He was the kickoff returner, and he scored six touchdowns, kicking five of the extra points. Basically, he did it all.”

“You can say anything superlative about him and I’ll double it,” said his coach Clark Shaughnessy to the Chicago Tribune in 1935.

Among his many nicknames, Berwanger was known as “The Man in the Iron Mask,” a reference to the faceguard he wore to protect his twice-broken nose. For more reasons than one, he was hard to forget – the Chicago Tribune polled all the opposing players in Berwanger’s senior season and 104 of the 107 participants concluded that he was the best halfback they’d ever seen.

Even Gerald Ford, a future president who won back-to-back national championships with Michigan, would attest to Berwanger’s brilliance and he carried a permanent scar under his left eye to prove it.

The New York Times quoted Ford in 2002, “When I tackled Jay one time, his heel hit my cheekbone and opened it up three inches,” he said. Ford has described Berwanger as “one of the greatest athletes I’ve known.”

In November 1935, the Downtown Athletic Club in New York recognized Berwanger’s impact on the college game by making him the inaugural recipient of a new trophy given to the “most valuable player east of the Mississippi.” The following year it was renamed after club’s late athletic director, John Heisman.

On hearing news of his accolade via a telegram, Berwanger didn’t quite know what to make of it. Speaking about the honor a half-century later he said that it wasn’t really a big deal at the time.

“No one at school said anything to me about winning it other than a few congratulations. I was more excited about the trip (to New York) than the trophy because it was my first flight,” he said.

Indeed, Berwanger didn’t have much use for the trophy once it was in his possession, which was described as being too wide for a mantlepiece and too large for a coffee table. According to the UChicago magazine, the stiff arm of the player depicted in the trophy spent many years propping the door open at his Aunt Gussie’s house.

Three months later, the NFL held its first formalized draft and it was much different than the razzmatazz of the modern day. The Hartford Courant described it as “no gala, more like a penny-ante poker game. Nine cigar-puffing, mogul wannabees, some of whom were paying their players with IOUs, stubbornly trying to salvage their dream of professional football.”

Berwanger told the Courant in 1994 that he was oblivious to the draft at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.

“I found out I was drafted by reading it in the newspaper,” he said, “I didn’t even know the draft was going on.”

Philadelphia Eagles owner Bert Bell had persuaded his peers to formalize a draft in order to cease the expensive and “self-defeating” bidding wars for college players and he’d proposed that teams should choose players in reverse order from the previous season’s standings. That meant the worst team, Bell’s own 2-9 Eagles, went first and chose Berwanger, quickly dealing his rights to the Chicago Bears. The Eagles didn’t think they’d be able to afford Berwanger’s salary demands, and the Bears owner and coach George Halas soon realized he didn’t have enough money, either.

According to the Courant, the two met in the lobby of a downtown hotel in Chicago.

“He asked what I wanted,” Berwanger recalled, “and I had my tongue in my cheek. I told him, $25,000 for two years. He looked at my date and said, `Nice to have met you; have a nice time tonight.’ And that was the end of it.”

As Brian E Cooper, author of “First Heisman: The Life of Jay Berwanger” described it to UChicago Magazine, the player had made the Bears an offer they simply couldn’t accept.

“Jay basically signaled to Halas, by making an extremely high salary ‘demand,’ that he wasn’t really that interested in pro football,” Cooper said.

In his obituary in 2002, the Los Angeles Times quoted Berwanger, who had said, “There was no money in pro football then, that was during the Great Depression. I thought I’d have a better future by using my education rather than my football skills.”

Having snubbed a career as a professional football player, Berwanger considered competing in the decathlon at the Berlin Olympics that summer, but he chose instead to finish his studies, and he went to work as a foam rubber-salesman. In World War Two, he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander as a Navy flight instructor, and after the war he founded a company that made plastic and sponge-rubber strips for cars and farm machinery. According to the New York Times, Jay Berwanger Inc. was grossing $30 million a year when he sold it in 1992.

Berwanger isn’t the only player to be drafted first in the NFL and not play a game; tragically, the Heisman Trophy’s first black recipient, Ernie Davis, was picked first in 1962 but died of leukemia at the age of 23 and never played for the Cleveland Browns.

And although Berwanger never played in the NFL, his name still carries a unique distinction within a league that would become the most lucrative in all of sport. He was the very first pick in the very first draft, but his timing was just a little off. Before his death at the age of 88 in 2002, Berwanger noted that if he’d been drafted even just a few years later, then he would surely have turned professional. And nobody can deny that he was an original.

“I still think of myself as the first, kind of like being George Washington,” Berwanger once said.

CNN
 — 

Those who know him best say Ahmed Hassanein isn’t close to reaching his full potential, even as he stands to possibly make history this weekend as the first Egyptian ever chosen in the NFL draft.

Perhaps that’s not surprising for the anchor of Boise State’s defensive line over the last two seasons. After all, the Cairo native didn’t know a single thing about football until he arrived in Southern California almost seven years ago.

Now, with the support of his brother and coaches at Loara High School and Boise State, Hassanein has become a monster on the gridiron. Boise head coach Spencer Danielson says he’s the best edge rusher to come out of the Mountain West Conference powerhouse in a long time. Off the field, he’s even more impressive.

“Knowing his character, knowing his work ethic, knowing his journey, knowing his testimony, I’d be willing to bet everything I have on him,” said his half-brother, Cory Besch.

“And I think any team that’s willing to invest in him is going to not just get a football player, but they’re going to get somebody who’s going to represent their team, their culture better than any other prospect in the draft. I will put that part of his skillset against anybody. The leadership, the passion and the fact that he is an untapped, unrefined diamond that is still being discovered.”

Projected to be a late-round pick on Saturday, Hassanein racked up 24 sacks as a Bronco, most of which came after he took over the starting edge rusher job as a junior. He was a first-team all-conference player in the 2023 and 2024 seasons and was a captain in his senior season. It’s an impressive resumé for any college player, but even more so for the still-raw Hassanein.

In less than a decade, Hassanein has moved across the world, learned English, learned football and the unique language of the sport, adjusted to the culture shocks of Orange County, California, and Boise, Idaho, converted from Islam to Christianity and found himself as a leader in the locker room, on the field and in the community.

But Danielson said teams considering picking up Hassanein in the draft ought to know he’s more than his story: He’s also a hell of a football player.

“I don’t want people to get it twisted. There’s a phenomenal story about Ahmed, right? Everything we talked about, who he is as a person – Egypt to California to Boise,” Danielson told CNN Sports. “I don’t want people to get it twisted: Ahmed’s one of the best football players in the nation.

“There are so many things about his life that are just make it an amazing story. But, oh man, he’s gonna get drafted because he’s gonna have a monster impact on the field in the NFL. I just want that to be known for people – you’re not only just getting a great story, you’re getting a big-time football player.”

The Analytics and methodology behind the NFL Draft

The Analytics and methodology behind the NFL Draft

06:02

Hassanein moved to the United States from Egypt just before his sophomore year of high school after Besch made a visit to Cairo and realized the half-brother, who he hadn’t seen in 10 years, might have a future on the gridiron. Besch played football in college at Azusa Pacific University and entered coaching after his college days were done, though he still played in Europe. After one of those semi-pro seasons in Austria were finished, Besch went to Egypt and realized his little brother wasn’t so little anymore.

The then-15-year-old Hassanein was about six-feet, one-inch tall and weighed about 215 pounds, a CrossFit enthusiast and looking like he could succeed in football – a sport he’d never played and didn’t know anything about.

“At the time, I had just finished playing a professional season, a semi-pro season, in Austria, so I was still in pretty good shape. And I worked out with him and when I was working out with him and holding my own, and he was holding his own with me, I could tell there was definitely potential,” Besch said. “I knew what the game of football had done for me, giving me a purpose and identity and the life lessons that I had learned and continued to teach the next generation. I just knew that that that would benefit him.”

“I didn’t necessarily know that he was going to be a great prospect, but I knew that he needed to get out of that environment, and I knew that football was an avenue and a tool to help him do that.”

Hassanein’s home life in Egypt wasn’t great at the time and that led to issues in school and his personal life, but he found an outlet in the gym. When Besch pitched him, and the rest of his family, on Hassanein moving to Southern California and trading the CrossFit gym for the football field, the future defensive star jumped at the chance.

From there, it was the start of one of the most intense learning curves imaginable.

“He walked in here, and obviously he’s a good-sized kid, as big as anybody we had,” said Mitch Olson, his coach at Loara. “And he was athletic. He did CrossFit in Egypt.

“When we got him out on the field, he knew nothing. He didn’t know formations, nothing. So what we did is we’re going to put him at defensive tackle. It’s the easiest, and we’ll just tell him a couple things to do. And right away, he was just so strong and just dominating. In fact, we didn’t spend as much time developing him as we should have, because we had to get other kids going.”

Hassanein arrived in the United States not knowing the language, not knowing the game and only just getting reacquainted with his brother who was now his primary guardian in the US.

There was some healing that needed to be done, Besch said.

“I didn’t actually know what I was getting myself into when I take my brother in. I didn’t know how difficult his struggles were. I didn’t know how difficult the language barrier was going to be. I didn’t know what it was right like to raise a 16-year-old boy. I knew what it was like to raise a 10-year-old little girl, right?” he said, referring to his daughter.

“But I didn’t know what that meant. Didn’t know how much he was going to eat. I didn’t know all of the challenges and things, but I did know that God had me there for a reason … and I knew that God’s calling on my life as a coach was purposeful.”

Hassanein worked hard at his game – and at learning English. Olson said within about three months, Hassanein went from knowing very little English to understanding what was being said and being able to communicate effectively.

Learning the rules of football, though, was a bit more of a challenge.

“We start playing games and, in every game, he gets a 15-yard penalty because he didn’t know the rules,” Olson said. “The first game he played in, about the first series, he grabs the quarterback’s face mask and just body slams him, and he gets flagged.

He added: “Next game he’s on the punt return team and he tackles a guy who’s running down trying to make the tackle. … So we taught him a bunch of stuff, but then there was a whole bunch of stuff that he learned. But I’m telling you, halfway through his first year, you’d have thought he’d been playing football for two, three years.”

A lot of that work got done at home with Besch, whose furniture sometimes suffered for it.

“Any detail you can think of about the game, I’m having to explain to him, whether that’s around the kitchen table, in the kitchen,” Besch said. “We’re working on how to get leverage on a blocker. He’s throwing me into cabinets. It was insane. Literally, it was just a whole learning process every second of the day.”

Eventually, the process of learning football evolved from an excuse for a fresh start in the US to a potential career path. As he played more and worked more and learned more, Hassanein decided that football was all he wanted to do.

First, he told Besch. Then he told Olson. The goal wasn’t just to play in high school or college. The goal was the NFL.

“It’s everything for him,” Besch said. “I mean, his identity was 100% (football) once he got here, there was no other motivation. And it’s weird because the goal wasn’t to send him here to become a football player, but we knew that was going to be part of it, because that’s what our lives consist of. But I didn’t ever necessarily expect him to take it on so personally and for it to become his passion.”

Clarity and confidence

The challenges Hassanein faced were immense. Not only was he brand new to the sport that he wanted to play professionally, but he also went to a school that was not exactly a football powerhouse.

It took a little time for Hassanein to realize exactly what it would mean to lift himself to the lofty heights of Division 1 football, let alone the NFL. It was a conversation with Besch that made it click.

“He’s telling me, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to be a Division I football player.’ And I’m seeing him maybe not being as motivated and really understanding what that looks like, because it’s not just working out, right? It’s everything you do,” Besch said.

“If you’re going to be that type of guy, it’s got to show up in the way you carry yourself around the house, around school, pick up after yourself – just how you handle responsibility. And I was getting frustrated as his brother, because I’m seeing him not doing that.

“So, I remember telling him one day, I said, ‘Bro, I need you to do me a favor. I have homework for you.’ And he goes, ‘What is it?’ I said, ‘It’s football homework. I want you to think about: ‘What does it take? What is the number one player in the country doing every day?’ If you were to imagine a Division I football prospect does every single day, write it down right from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. What does his day look like?

“And so he did. He wrote out a list: He wakes up early, he eats healthy, he takes his vitamins, he drinks water, he does this, he studies, he watches film and all these things. And then I told him, ‘OK, now that list you just made, compare that to what you do every day.’ How much of this are you doing? Because it’s great to say it, right? It’s a whole other thing to actually do it, because it’s not easy, or everyone would do it.”

Hassanein’s response to that conversation was simple: “OK, I get it.”

Olson said that from that point on, he’d never seen a player work as hard. Hassanein put on 20 or 25 pounds of muscle each year of high school, woke up at 5 a.m. for workouts, watched film constantly and practiced his craft.

“I don’t think I’ve had anybody just put that much work out, but he doesn’t know any other way,” Olson said. “I’ve never seen him do anything half ass. He has one speed. He’s the guy in practice that you hate because he doesn’t go half speed. He is old school, an old school kind of a guy. And he’s an absolute worker.”

After his junior season, with the scholarship offers still not coming in the way that they wanted, Hassanein had to deal with a new obstacle: The Covid-19 pandemic.

CNN’s Coy Wire reflects on his NFL Draft experience

CNN’s Coy Wire reflects on his NFL Draft experience

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The virus closed down high school athletics across California and suddenly it seemed like Hassanein’s best opportunity to make a good impression – the summer camp circuits where high school players regularly get discovered – might go out the window. After months of sending tapes around and trying to get in touch with college coaches, Hassanein and Besch finally found an opportunity to showcase his skills at a camp about 30 minutes away from their home.

Besch told Hassanein that it was his best shot at getting recruited, and he sold his brother to anyone who’d listen, including as they’re filling out the paperwork to register for the camp.

“I’m basically selling him to these guys. I see a scout in the background, and his ears perk up when I say that he’s only been playing football for two years,” Besch said. “He’s from Egypt, and nobody knows who he is. The scout literally audibly says, ‘Well, that’ll change after today,’ like he says that in the background, and that’s when I knew. I was like, OK, he’s passing the eye test.”

A standout performance at that camp against some of the state’s top prospects got the ball rolling. But it was an old connection from college and a video of Hassanein working out in a mask that started his path to Boise.

Danielson was the defensive line coach for Boise at the time and happened to come across a video of Hassanein on social media. When Hassanein told Besch that Danielson had sent him a message, it seemed the pieces were falling into place.

Besch and Danielson played together in college at Azusa Pacific and were friends, though they had grown apart in the years since school. But the connection still existed and Besch reached out to Danielson to try and get his old friend truly interested in his brother.

“He was sending me videos of literally him in a garage, pass rushing, striking,” Danielson said of Besch.

The coach remained skeptical. Besch is a great athlete but he was built more like an undersized slot receiver than a defensive end.

“You hear that he’s 6’3”, 215, but you’re like, is he really?” Danielson said. “You get him next to a door frame, right? You’re like, trying to figure out exactly how big he is.”

Besch tried to sell his half-brother on Boise as other schools came calling, but all it took was a virtual tour – no on-campus visits were allowed due to Covid – for Hassanein to sign up to head to Idaho.

On a virtual call with Danielson, Hassanein decided to commit. He didn’t tell Besch he was doing it, and it seemed out of the blue.

“Just in Ahmed fashion he said, ‘Coach, I trust you. I don’t know anything about Boise, Idaho. I don’t really know even much about football, but I trust you and that you’re going to help me become the best version of myself,’” Danielson said.

Still the nerves over how big Hassanein really was – was he really six-foot-three when his brother was about half a foot shorter? – were present throughout the Boise defensive coaching staff.

“I knew what time he was being dropped off, and me and our entire staff were waiting to see him get dropped off to make sure he was 6’3”,” Danielson said. “We’re like, ‘Please don’t be 5’11,” like, did we just get hoodwinked? And he pops out of the car and looks like a Greek god. And I’m like, ‘Yep, we’re good boys.’”

For Besch, it was a time of mixed emotions – he was thrilled for his brother, but now it was no longer his time to be Hassanein’s personal coach. He had to trust the staff at Boise to keep him growing. But he figured Hassanein was in good hands.

“Knowing that Spencer was the guy helped me immensely, because I knew that if there was one person I could entrust, you know, not just the development of him as a football player, but the development of his character … I knew he was going to be a positive person under Spencer Danielson,” he said.

After getting some time as a true freshman – becoming the first Egyptian player in FBS history – and playing in 12 games as a second-stringer as a sophomore, Hassanein finally got a chance to start as a junior at Boise. He seized that opportunity with gusto.

He turned in a first-team all-Mountain West Conference season, ranking fifth in the FBS with 12.5 sacks, making 53 total tackles including 16.5 for loss and forced two fumbles.

It was the moment those close to him had been waiting for.

“Before his junior year, you saw a lot of talent, but you saw a very robotic person that was a pleaser and trying to do exactly what he was told to do,” said Erik Chinander, who took over as the defensive line coach at Boise late in 2022.

“And somewhere in that next fall camp before his junior year, kind of when he had that breakout year, you saw him stop thinking and playing a little bit more freely, and taking what people were giving him instead of exactly what he was coached to do or exactly what the playbook said.”

The change was noticeable to Olson, who drove more than four hours to catch Boise’s game against Fresno State in the 2023 season. Olson said he waited to greet Hassanein outside the locker room at the stadium after the game, and what he saw from Hassanein’s teammates made clear that something special was going on.

“The way the guys treated him was he was the guy,” Olson said. “And I called his brother, who was back in Boise. I go, Cory, I’m sitting there, and he had had about eight sacks by then, and I think it was about three quarters of the way through the season. I told Cory, ‘I’m standing outside the locker room, and he didn’t see me, and I’m just watching the guys interact with him.’ I go, ‘He’s the guy, Cory.’”

For Besch, that 2023 season was the realization of all the work he and his brother had done in those kitchen technique sessions, the still-not-close-to-finished product starting to look like a star.

It was a year later that he realized his brother was really going to have a solid chance at being a professional because he kept succeeding even though defenses were starting to game plan against Hassanein.

“I knew that, as a football coach, it’s great to have a breakout season but the next year is going to be exponentially more difficult because every single coach on the other side of the ball is game planning for you,” he said. “You’re going to get all the attention, you’re going to get all the double teams, you’re going to get all the chippers, and you’re still going to have to perform if you want to make it, because this is Boise State. You don’t get to have a down year. You need to have, you know, eight, nine sacks and continue to progress, or else you fall off the cliff.

“And when he started doing it, still, (with a) sack in Oregon early in the game. It’s like if you’re doing it against those guys, then you can do it against anybody.”

That production on the field was created by an incredible devotion to his game off of it. Hassanein became known around Boise as one of the hardest working players on the team, someone who was devoted to getting better each and every day and was simply grateful for the opportunity to play.

“He puts in a ton of time, not only in getting to the building early to get his body ready, get his nutrition right, all those kinds of things, but like, he’s always in the film room,” Chinander said.

“And it’s not just busy work for him. He’s in there, and he’ll come grab us and want to ask questions, like real questions. He’s got multiple notebooks that are full of coaching points he’s got from the head coach, from me, from Coach (Jabril) Frazier. You know, it’s one thing you’ve got to be careful (about) with Ahmed – is he is going to write down what you say? So you’ve got to choose your words wisely, because he will write it down.”

Danielson called him “the most grateful young man you’ll ever be around,” a player who would thank coaches after a hard day of practice, get coffee for staff, treat everyone around him with respect.

“He’s got the football skillset, the talent that I think means he’s gonna be a long-time NFL pro,” Danielson said, “but he is going to immediately change the culture of the NFL team he goes to, because of how grateful he is, because of the kind of teammate he is.”

The knock on Hassanein among draft prognosticators is that he’s still a pretty raw prospect, not the kind of guy who’s going to come in on day one and start blowing away NFL offensive linemen.

But those close to him say give him a couple years and he might be one of the best edge rushers in football.

“He’s going to be a guy who’s going to get drafted here in the next few days that you know may not start quite at the level of some other guys,” Chinander said, “but as you draft him and you’re working with him for the next early portion of his career, he’s going to get better and better and better. And where he’s at now – it’s not even close to where he’ll finish his NFL career.”

Besch, who knows him best, believes his half-brother has reached about 70% of his potential.

“That’s the secret of the draft, to be honest. I have a unique perspective as a football coach and as his brother and seeing where he’s at, I would say he’s 70% of his potential,” Besch said. “If you take that ability and that coachability, and relentless effort and motor and desire to grow and develop, and you give it to an NFL coach who actually wants to develop him … the sky’s the limit.”

With the draft having started on Thursday, NFL scouts and executives are now well aware of all the players who they could have at training camp this summer as a part of their team.

But if they needed one final sales pitch from Danielson, he’s happy to give it.

“Ahmed can play in any defense you want,” he said. “He can be a four-down D-end, he can be an outside linebacker in the 3-4. That’s uncommon. I’ve been here for nine years, and we put out a lot of edge guys in the NFL, and we’ve had some of the top defenses in the country, and he’s been the best edge guy that we’ve had, that (is) not only violent in the run game but can absolutely impose his will on tight ends and offensive tackles.

“And I would urge people to watch Oregon and Penn State, watch those games. Watch the top tight end in the country and see how that went against Ahmed. I mean, just watch it.”

If and when Hassanein makes history as the first Egyptian ever drafted into the NFL, it’s something he’ll wear with pride, Chinander said. It will be the culmination of a long, unexpected journey that ultimately Hassanein has made on his own, but one in which so many other people feel incredibly invested.

Olson, his high school football coach who believes Hassanein is as fine a young man he’s ever come across in his 34 years of coaching, said he gets tears in his eyes watching his former player succeed on the field.

“That’s why I get emotional. It’s just, I’m just so happy for him. He’s worked his butt off. And a lot of times you don’t see that,” Olson said. “You don’t see guys reap the fruits of their labor. And hopefully he will – somehow, whether he gets drafted or not – somebody will pick him up and he’ll make it just because of the guy he is.”