At the end of a fierce final under the high domed ceiling of the Grand Palais, Caden Cunningham settled for silver. He smiled and graciously raised the hand of the new Olympic heavyweight champion, Iran’s Arian Salimi, who snatched victory in the deciding round of this fight after sending a long tentacled leg behind Cunningham to tap the sensor on his head guard.
Cunningham is only 21 and his chance will come again. In many ways this was the night he announced himself to the world, but the outlines were sketched a decade ago in his family living room, when a 10-year-old Cunningham and his dad hatched a plan to qualify for the Olympics in 2024.
“I wanted to move over to kickboxing but that isn’t in the Olympics, so when we looked at it we thought, no, let’s stick with taekwondo,” Cunningham told The Independent before the Games . “Me and my dad worked out that by Paris, that’s when I’d be old enough to compete. That’s when I decided. I trained every single second I could.”
He dedicated himself to the sport, and the hard work paid off here on a tense run to the final.
Cunningham first beat Niger’s Abdoul Issoufou in two straight rounds, and then saw off Cuba’s Rafael Alba in the deciding round of their quarter-final. In the semi-finals, the No 4-ranked Cunningham met Ivory Coast’s Cheick Sallah Cisse, the world champion and No 1. They had shared some tetchy bouts before and this was another feisty contest that went to the wire. They finished the deciding round with five points each and Cunningham progressed by virtue of his superior tally of non-scoring shots.
That set up the final against Salimi, the champion of Asia ranked 10th. Salimi is rangy and tall, and tried to use his long legs to land three-point head shots in the early stages, but Cunningham ducked and spun and fired into the body for two points himself, to take the first round.
The second round was cagey as Salimi chose his moments more carefully, and this time his toe extended out and clipped Cunningham’s head guard to force a decider. There, two more head kicks proved decisive for gold.
Despite defeat, Cunningham lapped up the moment, playing to the crowd and relishing the Olympic stage.
“I’m proud of myself,” he said. “Gutted, but I’m proud nevertheless. I’ve done a good job today, took out some big people. That fighter was amazing, he was better than me today, so that’s on me. We’ll work to make it better so there’s none of this silver going on.
“My opponent was the same as me: when we’re in the ring we’re ready to kill; outside, respect.”
Cunningham took up the sport aged six, inheriting his father’s love of martial arts, and he was soon mapping out his Olympic future. He would take on fights against bigger, stronger boys who would leave him feeling “beaten up”, but he enjoyed the challenge of learning the skills to overcome the physical deficit.
He suffered a major setback in his first fight of the 2022 World Championships when he felt the anterior cruciate ligament snap in his knee. But Cunningham’s attitude was to harness the adversity. “I just thought, this is going to make it a cooler story when I do go [to the Olympics]. I really knuckled down. I saw it as an opportunity to grow and come back an absolute monster. And that’s what I did.”
The future could be anything for Cunningham now. He has taken up part-time modelling with cover shoots for magazines – GQ recently called him “an Olympic prince (and a menswear king)”. He also has dreams of conquering UFC one day, and his designs on the more violent, lucrative world of mixed martial arts are serious.
He told The Independent before the Games: “UFC can wait until I’ve got my gold medal.” That will take another four years at least, and he must soon decide whether to chase that Olympic crown at Los Angeles 2028, or start a new path.
Asked what the future held after this final, he said: “It is the start of whatever I want it to be. If I stay in this, I will be the king of taekwondo in the next four years. One fight does not define me as a fighter.”
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