LOS ANGELES—Boxer Vladimir Yengibaryan, an Olympic Gold Medalist from 1956, passed away Friday in Los Angeles. He was 80, reported Boxing News.
Yengibaryan started his career as a bantamweight. His first of three European championship wins came in the 1953 competition, where he captured the Gold as a lightweight. Yengibaryan would repeat honors in 1957 and 1959 – both in the light welterweight division – and also captured Bronze in the 1955 Games.
His crowning achievement as an amateur came in the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne, scoring four consecutive decisions to capture Olympic Gold in the welterweight division. Yengibaryan was one of three Soviet boxers to win Gold that year, marking the beginning of its dominance in Olympic competition.
“I have never been knocked down throughout my entire career,”Yengibaryan, who also founded the Children and Youth Sport School in Yerevan shortly after retiring from boxing, told Boxing News “I was the Pretty Boy, had no scars and no swellings, but my hands were crushed by boxing because of so many hits I have delivered to my opponents”.
Yengibaryan moved to from Armenia to Los Angeles in 1992.
