Light-Heavyweight (≤81 kilograms), Men

The semi-finals in this class came down to an all-Eastern bloc tournament, with Soviet Lithuanian Danas Pozniakas defeating Bulgarian Georgi Stankov, and Romania’s Ion Monea winning by majority decision over Poland’s Stanisław Dragan. But in that second semi, Monea sustained a broken nose and could not appear for the final, Pozniakas winning the gold medal by a walkover. Pozniakas had been the favorite, having won the European Amateur title in 1965 and 1967, after taking silver in that class in 1963. He had been expected to make the 1964 Soviet Olympic team, but lost in the trials to Aleksey Kiselyov, who won a silver in the light-heavyweight class in 1964 and in the 1968 middleweight class in Mexico. Pozniakas would return in 1969 to win a third consecutive European Championship and then retired from competition. Monea was competing in his third Olympics, having won a bronze medal in 1960 as a middleweight, and he had lost in the semi-finals of the 1967 Europeans to Pozniakas, taking a bronze medal there as well.