Samurgashev was born on 13 September 1979 in Rostov-on-Don in an Armenian family. His family had a sports background, his mother was part of the Rostov handball team that won the Russian national championships. He started practicing Greco-Roman wrestling at the age of 7 under the tutelage of Suren Kazarian, along with his three older brothers Rafael, Albert, and Simon. By the end of the 1990s, he was a member of the junior national team of Russia, and became the Junior European Champion in 1998 and the Junior World Champion in 1999. In 1998, he won his first of six senior Russian Championships and began to be compete for the Russian national team.