BoxRec

How do you think he would have fared as a professional boxer?

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=42669

Here is Abramov boxing 4 years earlier in 1958.


http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=64100

Neat. I wouldn't call him another Liston but he definitely looks like he had some potential -- maybe a lot of potential.

He probably would have done the same as Liston and been annihilated by Clay.

IMOP He may have been a top ten contender by the time Ali was stripped of his title,
and instead fought Joe Frazier,or perhaps Jimmy Ellis for a title belt.

I disagree. The Americans regularly had the upper hand in AM comps vs the Soviets, the same would've occured for the most part in the pro ranks. Look at what correlated with American HWs doing awful on the pro scene . . they've been too piss-poor in the AMs for over a decade.
Hell, just look at instances like an incredibly green, raw 19 year old Foreman just walking over an older, much more experienced Jonas Čepulis in the Olympics.

dempseyfire wrote:Hell, just look at instances like an incredibly green, raw 19 year old Foreman just walking over an older, much more experienced Jonas Čepulis in the Olympics.

Look also how he struggled in eliminations to win a SD against Trela, who was 5'7'' and 189 (even if also more experienced).

George Foreman was like an anamoly.

Also since the East Europeans fighters back then(1950's,1960's,the Cold War era) could never turn pro,there was no incentive to really improve and they just got stale when they should have been in their prime.
(i.e bukko... millions... and millions and.... MILLIONS of rubels.)

Who were the best Heavyweight East European amateur fighters of the
1950's-1970's?
How would they be ranked?
There seems to be so little film or video-tape of their fights available.

Brutu wrote:George Foreman was like an anamoly.

Not really. Most U.S. amateurs were babies compared to the fighters from the communist states they were boxing. People hail about Stevenson but the guy was in his physical prime (late 20s/early 30s) blasting out 20 year olds.

Ron Lyle was about 30 years old when he fought as an amateur.

Amateur boxing back in the day used to be much better, There was not head gear. The matches were often charged by political fiction as well between nations.

I never heard of Abramov until now. He looks pretty good. If I were to pick a Russian amateur champion pre 1980 that could have been champion, my pick is Igor Vysotsky. Vysotsky was a hard punching fighter who beat the best amateurs of his time, including some who would become champion in the professional ranks. If Vysotsky tuned pro in the early 70's, he might have been the top guy in the mid to late 70's as Ali, Foreman, and Frazier began to fade. Check him out on the below link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Vysotsky

Is there any film/video footage of Igor Vysotsky?
esp sparring with Ali?

How good was the 6 foot 5 inch tall,Russian amateur heavyweight Evgeny Makarenko?

Brutu wrote:Ron Lyle was about 30 years old when he fought as an amateur.

Lyle was in his late 20s as an amateur, and had just started boxing in his 20s in prison . .

I'm not saying the Soviet fighters sucked, I just believe the HW scene would've still been dominated primarily by U.S. fighters, but of course someone like a Vysotsky could've been a champ in the late 70s, as long as he didn't fight Larry Holmes

IMOP,American amateur boxers esp heavyweights,had/have the luxury of eating big thick juicy steaks and drink lots of milk
as they train and get ready.
Soviet amateur boxers back then probably just felt grateful to get a bowel of gruel at the end of the day,
and maybe a few rubels for pocket change at the end of the year if they were lucky.

BTW Anyone know if Sylvester Stallone based the character "Ivan Drago' from ROCKYIV(1985),
on any particular boxer?

Brutu wrote:IMOP,American amateur boxers esp heavyweights,had/have the luxury of eating big thick juicy steaks and drink lots of milk
as they train and get ready.
Soviet amateur boxers back then probably just felt grateful to get a bowel of gruel at the end of the day,
and maybe a few rubels for pocket change at the end of the year if they were lucky.

?

Are you being serious?
The USSR treated their top amateurs VERY well. The Soviet Union was one of the two superpowers in the world at the time, it wasn't Somalia. For those the regime deemed 'special', and that would include their Olympic athletes, they were garnished with top shelf resources . . .I'm sure that included plenty of 'big juicy steaks' . . .

Brutu wrote:Soviet amateur boxers back then probably just felt grateful to get a bowel of gruel at the end of the day,
and maybe a few rubels for pocket change at the end of the year if they were lucky.

You appear to have no knowledge of how the USSR viewed it's top sportsmen.

check out how Abramov blocks a left to the body when he was against the ropes.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=64100[/quote]

anyone have a listing of all of Andrei Abramov's amateur record?
did he go to the Olympics?
what American or West European amateur heavyweights that later turned pro
did he fight?
Did Abramov eventually lose to Jonas Chepulis(who didnt look like a spring chicken when he fought 19 year old George Foreman in MexicoCity in 1968).

I have read of another Russian amateur heavyweight champion
by the name of Vadim Yemelyanov who competed in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo Japan.
He was big ,6 ft 4 inches tall and 230 lbs.
He fought Joe Frazier in the semi-finals.
Frazier knocked him down twice in the second and his handlers threw in the towel.
Frazier also broke his own thumb in doing so too.

Here is a link to a rare pic of Joe Frazier in the semi-finals of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics knocking down Vadim Yemelyanov,in which Frazier would also
break his thumb.
Frazier did not know that he had broken his thumb other then it really hurt.

http://books.google.com/books?id=tbEDAA ... pg=PA48&dq

also be sure to scroll up to see a pic of George Foreman vs Stamford"Big Bamboo"
Harris who would later become one of Foreman's sparring partner in Jamacia in 1973.