Career
Yengibaryan won a bronze medal in the bantamweight division at the 1951 USSR Championships. Yengibaryan joined the Soviet national boxing team in 1952 and was chosen by the USSR Olympic team to compete at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, but he did not participate due to injury. Yengibaryan and the Soviet team debuted in the European Amateur Boxing Championships at the 1953 European Amateur Boxing Championships in Warsaw. Yengibaryan won a gold medal in the lightweight division and became the first Soviet boxer to become a European Champion. In 1954, Yengibaryan moved up to the light-welterweight division and remained at this weight. He won his first Soviet National Championship in 1955 and would win it again in 1956 and 1958. Yengibaryan won an Olympic gold medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. He is only the second Soviet boxer to become an Olympic Champion after Vladimir Safronov, who won an Olympic gold medal just hours earlier. Yengibaryan continued to win gold medals at the 1957 European Amateur Boxing Championships and 1959 European Amateur Boxing Championships. He went to the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome as the clear favorite, but due to receiving a shoulder injury during competition, he lost in the quarterfinals to Polish boxer Marian Kasprzyk. After that, he decided to complete his career.
After retiring from his boxing career, he started coaching and founded the Children and Youth Sport School, which now bears his name, in Yerevan. This school was the first of many in the USSR boxing program. He spent 36 years as head of Armenia's national boxing academy. Yengibaryan later became a judge in the international category. In 1970's, he represented the USSR in the AIBA Referee Commission and acted as referee in major international competitions.
Read more about this topic: Vladimir Yengibaryan
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