{"id":473619,"date":"2026-02-14T02:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473619\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T02:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:51:07","slug":"israel-wins-mma-gold-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473619\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel wins MMA gold in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel’s MMA Association<\/a> celebrated a historic achievement as Yotam Glander won the first-ever gold medal for Israel’s under-21 national team at the European Championships, in Belgrade, Serbia, according to a report by N12.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Competing in the 52 kg weight class, Glander’s victory marked the third consecutive year he reached the finals of the European Championships<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2024, he won a silver medal in the under-18 division, followed by another silver medal in 2025 in the under-21 category.<\/p>\n

N12 reported that Glander defeated his Spanish opponent in under a minute, using a rear-naked choke to take his victory.<\/p>\n

Glander’s gold win marked Israel’s third medal<\/a> of the championship, following earlier victories by Guy Priente and Alon Avital in the youth division. In total, Israel’s teams earned 19 medals across all age groups.<\/p>\n

Also representing the association and Israel at the competition were four Israeli international referees: Ofer Lider, Arkady Sechkovsky, Shai Ofir, and Roi Ben Shalom.<\/p>\n

Ido Priente, president of the Israel MMA Association<\/a> and Glander’s coach, stated, “This has been an unprecedented European Championship for Israel’s teams this year. For the first time, we won three historic gold medals and a total of 19 medals, representing a significant improvement in both quantity and quality. This is undoubtedly the most successful competition in the association’s history since its establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cThere is no doubt that the present and future generation of MMA in Israel is flourishing. I would also like to thank Eric Kaplan and the \u2018Eilat\u2019 Association for their endless support of our activities. I am prouder than ever of Yotam’s victory. I had no doubt he would win gold this year, and now we are already looking ahead to the World Championships.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are always proud to represent the State of Israel around the world and will continue to do so with great pride.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel’s MMA Association celebrated a historic achievement as Yotam Glander won the first-ever gold medal for Israel’s under-21…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,556,641,3242,73801,638,9148,82,192524],"class_list":{"0":"post-473619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-championship","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-gold","13":"tag-israeli-sports","14":"tag-mma","15":"tag-serbia","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-team-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}