Biography 14/03/20 Valery Popenchenko: how it really killed the best fighter of the USSR
In the history of Soviet sport was a lot of Champions. However, Valery Popenchenko not just earned the fame as the best boxer of the USSR, he was not like most of his comrades in Boxing, even from the first echelon. Alas, his life ended under mysterious circumstances when he was in the Prime of life.
the First victory
Valeri Vladimirovich Popenchenko was born 26 August 1937 in the Moscow suburb of Kuntsevo. His father, a military pilot, in 1941, was killed at the front. Mother, Rufina V., raised her son alone. Hoping to make the boy a real man, she gave him in the Suvorov military school in Tashkent.
Boxing Valera became involved with 12 years. The first coach of the future stars of the sport was the school teacher is the captain of the Armed Forces Yury Matulevich-Ilichev. In 1955, the cadet was awarded the title of champion of the USSR among juniors on tournament in Grozny.
in the Autumn of the same year and graduated with distinction from the Suvorov, Valery Popenchenko he entered the Leningrad higher border military-sea school, where I got to the trainer of the sports society “Dynamo” Grigory Costanzo.
the Success of a talented student is not long in coming. In 1959 Popenchenko won the title of USSR champion in the super Middleweight division. Alas, he could not participate in the European Championships, as the qualifying rounds lost to Gennady Sadovo. But from 1961 for five years, he has consistently won the national championship.
for a Long time Popenchenko was not in team because of his alleged “sloppy” technique. The fact that he moved around the ring with a slightly tilted back his head and bowed low with his hands, and struck as if in a street fight – biting and sweeping.
that All changed after 1963 in the course of the championship of Europe on Boxing Valery in the second Raunde final match knocked out of the Romanian boxer ion monia. At the Olympics in 1964 Popenchenko won multiple battles with strong athletes and was awarded with Val Barker trophy, which at this prestigious international competition is awarded the most technical fighter. It was the only case when an award was a Soviet athlete.
the Departure from this great sport
the perennial Series of victories made Popenchenko famous. His face flashed on television screens, photographs of the athlete and then appeared in the press. However, after 213 fights, 200 of which he won, Popenchenko decided to leave the sport. However, in addition to sports, in his life was things that he believed, perhaps even more important: the service in the Higher engineering technical school, where he defended his thesis and received the degree of candidate of technical Sciences, membership in the Komsomol Central Committee. And Popenchenko was fond of art, in perfection knew English and wrote poetry. Chess he played at the level of master of sports and won the Anatoly Karpov. For all this he was nicknamed boxer-intellectual.
With his future wife, a student at the shipbuilding Institute Tatiana Vologdina, Popenchenko met in the Hermitage the exhibition of Rodin. Three months later, Valery and Tatiana got married. After the birth of the son Maxim, the family moved to Moscow, where lived the mother of the executed.
Alien grave
In the capital Popenchenko became the head of the Department of physical education Bauman. N. Uh. Bauman was going to defend his doctoral thesis. At this time, in the mid 1970s, built a new building of the University. Popenchenko supervised this work and was often on construction sites. February 15, 1975 tragedy struck. Down the stairs with a low handrail, Valery suddenly on the next turn did not keep balance and fell into the stairwell. Eyewitnesses claimed that while Popenchenko did not utter a sound. The death was classified as an accident.
However, there were rumors that Popenchenko fell down the stairs, not himself, and was dumped by someone already in an unconscious condition. According to one version, he had a conflict with the foreman of the construction team, of which he was accused of financial shortage. And he hired some criminals, who dealt with a former boxer. Another version says that Popenchenko had a mistress, and her husband learned about the affair, started a fight, which resulted in the fall.
Valery Popenchenko was buried at the Vvedenskoye cemetery in the grave that was meant for the writer Vasily Shukshin. Just at the last moment someone from the government ordered to bury other more prestigious Novodevichy cemetery. Here is his grave and useful famous boxer.
Russian Seven
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