He won two matches at the world championships 2007 including an upset over Germany's world military champion Gottlieb Weiss but lost to veteran Yerkabulan Shinaliev and fell one win short of direct qualification.
In the final of the 2008 Beijing Olympics he beat Kenneth Egan of Ireland to win the gold medal. The final match was controversial in that the judges failed to record multiple points for Egan, the NBC announcers concurred on this point.
