If you've been to Turkey, there's probably an off chance that you've heard about oil-wrestling and the world of Kırkpınar, a wrestling competition held near Edirne, Turkey that started 640+ years ago. But have you heard of Mustafa Yıldız? Mustafa Yıldız was born in 1943 in Akhisar's village of Sazoba. He took an early interest in wrestling. When he was only 19 years old, he entered the Kırkpınar Meydanı. In that same year (1962), he won first place in the "Deste Orta Boy" category. In 1967, Yıldız aimed for the famed title, Başpehlivan. In his first Kırkpınar competition , he was selected as the Most Gentlemanly Wrestler. However during a match in 1970, he objected the referee's calls and decisions a bit too forcefully and he was banned from Kırkpınar.

Yıldız's ban was eventually lifted in 1972 and he returned back to Kırkpınar this time stronger than before. He tossed his opponents one after another, startling many who had predicted otherwise. Yıldız's opponent was Turgut Kılıç, an underdog who was taken out of the previous year's competition early, but had made a daring return. The fight lasted only 34 minutes! Yıldız flipped Kılıç by the belt, becoming both Başpehlivan & the first Black wrestling champion in Turkey. Not soon after in 1975, Yıldız would be given another ban, this time for three years.

In 1978, a heated argument with a friend resulted in him receiving five critical, life threatening knife wounds. He held onto life & returned to Kırkpınar in 1981 and reached the finals, surprising many! The odds were stacked against him - Aydın Demir was a four-time winner, with three consecutive championships. The match lasted for an hour and twenty five minutes & was eventually delayed. The next day they began anew, with Yıldız overcoming Demir after two hours of wrestling. In 1985, he finished in sixth place and not long after announced his retirement from the sport, looking instead to work as a referee in the Kırkpınar competition. Sadly in 2001, he passed away but he does leave us with a few words: "Live is full of surprises. It cannot be known what a person will become. In the third year of my escape from death, I became the Başpehlivan at Kırkpınar."

Here's a video of Mustafa Yıldız performing peşrev, a ritual that wrestlers perform to raise their and the audience's spirits and prepare for the match.