István Kovács (boxer)
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| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | István Kovács | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | Ko-Ko and The Cobra | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality |
 Hungary
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| Born |
17 August 1970 Budapest |
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| Height | 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 57 kg (126 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Boxing | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rated at | Featherweight | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Vasas Sport Club | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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István Kovács (born August 17, 1970), nicknamed Ko-Ko or sometimes The Cobra is a Hungarian retired world champion 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 was a world champion, holding the WBO featherweight belt in 2001.
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.
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Wikipedia