Anatoly Klimanov

At the time of Anatoly Klimanov’s active boxing career, the Soviet Union had many great middleweight boxers, such as Vyacheslav Lemeshev, Rufat Riskiyev and Juozas Juocevičius, so Klimanov, whose natural weightclass would have been middleweight, had to find his success in other categories. In 1973 he won the European Amateur Championships in light middleweight and in 1975 he added another European Amateur Championships gold in light heavyweight.

In 1974 he also was a bronze medalist in light middleweight at the World Amateur Championships held in Havana, Cuba. In 1973 Klimanov won his only Soviet Union Championship title, this time in middleweight, defeating the future Olympic silver medalist Rufat Riskiyev. At the 1976 Olympics, Klimanov lost his second round match against eventual gold medal winner Leon Spinks with points.

Klimanov retired from boxing in 1982 and started to work as a boxing coach in sport club Hart, where he worked until his death. The most famous of his pupils was European Champion Volodymyr Virchis. He was also coach of Ukrainian national team and in 1993 he was a coach of Yugoslavia Olympic team. Klimanov died of a stroke on his way to sport club )Hart) to give a training session.