|
István Kovács (born August 17, 1970), nicknamed Ko-Ko or sometimes The Cobra is a Hungarian retired boxer. As an amateur he won the bantamweight gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics, and was a world champion at the 1991 World Amateur Boxing Championships in flyweight and at the 1997 World Amateur Boxing Championships in featherweight. As a professional he held the WBO featherweight belt in 2001. ==Amateur career== Kovács was born in Budapest and began his sports career as a football player, training among others in the youth team of MTK Budapest. He started boxing relatively late at the age of 15 in EVIG SE. He moved to Vasas SC in 1988 where he was trained by Gyula Bódis. His first international success also came in 1988 when he won the junior-flyweight gold medal at the Junior European Championship in Gdańsk. He soon started to dominate the lower weightclasses on the Hungarian scene among such rivals like Olympic bronze medallists János Váradi and Róbert Isaszegi, and in 1990 he was already a member of the Hungarian team at the World Cup in Dublin where he won a silver medal. In 1991, already as a flyweight, he won the gold medal at the European Championships in Gothenburg and later that year he also won the World Championship in Sydney. Due to his outstanding achievements he was elected as Hungarian Sportsman of The Year the end of the year, ahead of competitors like legendary medley swimmer Tamás Darnyi who was elected as that year's World Swimmer of the Year and wrestling world champion Péter Farkas. Kovács's spectacular boxing style and nice personality soon made him a crowd and media favourite, and he was widely considered as one of Hungary's top gold medal chances at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. He easily outpointed his first three opponents, but in the semi-finals he was surprisingly upset by Choi Chol-Su from North Korea. Choi, who defeated other future professional world champions Paul Ingle and Robbie Peden in his two previous bouts, went on to win the gold medal and Kovács had to settle for the bronze which was considered by many as a disappointment at that time. After the Olympics Kovács's career seemed to decline. He broke up with his long-time trainer and continued with Imre Szántó and moved up to bantamweight, but his results did not achieve the same level as before, his best result being a bronze medal at the 1993 European Championships in Bursa and at the 1995 World Cup in Bangkok. The media also reported about party nights and personal problems, and many thought that he will never find his former self. But in 1996 Kovács came roaring back, once again winning the European Championships in Vejle, and then in the summer he finally gained the long-awaited Olympic gold medal in Atlanta outpointing Arnaldo Mesa from Cuba in the final. At the end of the year he was elected as Sportsman of The Year in Hungary for the second time. After the Olympics he was signed by the Hamburg-based professional stable Universum Box-Promotion together with the now-famous Klitschko brothers Vitali and Wladimir, to join world champions Dariusz Michalczewski, Artur Grigorian and Regina Halmich, but he opted to stay among the amateurs for one more year because Budapest was to host the 1997 World Championships, where in front of several thousand home supporters, he managed to conclude his amateur career by winning his second gold medal, this time in featherweight. He finished his amateur career with an outstanding record of 282 wins, 14 losses and one draw. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「István Kovács (boxer)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|