Badshah Khan J&K’s professional wrestling champion achieves dream

Wrestling as a career - Arif saleem in conversation with Kashmirlook.com

Farooq Bhat |Kashmirlook

December 7,2020

Arif Saleem Bohru Alias Badshah Khan became the first professional wrestler from J&K, a 23 year old ordinary boy arif turned to be the first professional wrestler hailing from Jammu & Kashmir. Arif belongs to the remote area of the Jammu known as Neel, while his career has begun by embracing all the odds that God bestowed upon him but in all this tormenting times he never lost hope for a better future and he never gave up to the situation and today he is famous as Badshah Khan. He has set an example that a person should never give up in life, no matter what. Life was not as easy as it seems to be for him during the initial days of his career.

Arif was born in a Kashmiri family of Mohd Saleem Bohru, who belonged to a low middle class family and that’s where his struggle for life began. In order to meet the two ends of life Arif started working on low wages at a very young age in order to overcome his financial strains but in all odds, deep down somewhere he knew that there was a wrestler growing inside of him. He started to gain confidence and interest in wrestling from the moment when his father told him about the hardships and achievements made by the wrestler namely The Great Khali who hails from Punjab, India and was pursuing a career in wrestling at WWE. Soon after that wrestling became an important part of his life and also a life changing gold coin, which destiny tossed over his fate. Arif was only 8 years old when his father narrated the hardship and comforts about Khali with an aim of rising a ray of hope amid the hardships that was faced by the young bud, Arif.

However, Arif understood it very well that nothing is gained in life without hard work, determination, and dedication. This was the beginning for the transformation of an ordinary boy Arif Saleem into a tough beast Badshah Khan in the beat of professional wrestling. Arif was 20 years old when he joined the CWE academy of the Great Khali. He had a great passion for learning wrestling from the Great Khali but everyone has to be patient for having the right time for the best thing to happen. Initially during the training, Arif spent days under a certain trainer and attended small wrestling competitions and after performing at par in the competitions his confidence level boosted up which made him to start training with the professional wrestlers under the supervision of The Great Khali and won various wrestling competitions. Arif recalls the best moments of his life when he was entitled with the name ‘Badshah Khan’ by his inspiration ‘The Great Khali’ for his performance.

Today Arif (Badshah Khan) is considered as a toughest wrestler of the CWE. Having a very good record of winning matches around 85%. Arif is the first wrestler from J&K where unfortunately no training facilities are being facilitated by the government and this is the reason why Arif doesn’t visit his home as for now, it has been more than two complete years that Arif didn’t saw his mother. It was said that he was only visiting his home during Eid citing the reason of non availibilty of training facilities. He is very much dteterminned and focused in his profession and he bays from visiting his hometown so that his training won’t get affected due to the lack of training during his stay. Arif has worked very hard to reach the place where he is today. His journey from Arif Saleem to ‘Badshah Khan’ which The Great Khali himself gave him was full of ups and downs. Now Arif has become very famous on social media. His fighting videos have gone viral, his videos has set the social media on fire, His fan following has grown rapidly on Instagram, where he constantly shares his pictures and videos of wrestling events. He has also turned into an inspiration for the youth of India. This proves that he is capable of changing his life from better to best. He is approved to be a warrior with his never give up traits.