Strongest boxing legacy: Russia, Ukraine, or Poland?

If you were to compare those countries based on famous professional boxers, amateurs, trainers, and cultural sport icons, which would you say has the strongest boxing tradition?

Ukraine obviously boasts many achievements: Klitschkos dominating an entire era, amateur ATG and P4P monster Lomachenko, and the cruiserweight GOAT and a heavyweight champion Usyk.

Poland can only directly claim the likes of Michalczewski, Golota, Adamek, and Wlodarczyk, but both Zale's and Ketchel's parents were Poles, and the duo had only adapted anglicised names later on. Then you have the Olympic legacy of Felix Stamm and his students, as well as war heroes he likes of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski.

I admit I know little about Russia apart of the legacy of Soviet's school of boxing and a few famous professionals like Povetkin, Tszyu, Kovalev, and more recently Bivol and Beterbiev.

 

You forgot GGG on the Russian side.

 

According to just only the fighters you posted, I would say Russia has the edge but I can also see the debate that Ukraine and Russia might be evenly tied for 1st and 2nd place.
Poland in a solid 3rd place.

 

Golovkin takes immense pride in his Kazakh heritage. I don't think he should contribute to Russian legacy.

 

In terms of professionals, it's definitely Ukraine... pretty amazing in how short time-span They produced so many excellent fighters. There are some underrated ones too like Dzinziruk, Sydorenko and Kotelnik... Great fighting nation, one could say ...

What's interesting about Russia, is that there's still no two-division champion coming from there. They had some great amateur boxers though - although going back to Soviet years, I'm not sure how many of their champions were native Russians and how many were coming from other Soviet republics.

We (In Poland) had some gold generations in Amateur boxing also. By the time country was opening up, our amateur system was already on decline and is in deep crisis for years now. We didn't produce any elite PFP level fighters... Well, unless We can claim Stanley Ketchel (Stanislaw Kiecal) indeed... but I don't know. From what I know - He considered himself an American. If some of the historians on here could maybe say something about his feelings regarding his Polish roots, would be interesting to hear.

Either way - In terms of professionals, We're definitely distant third here.

 

No..he's Kazakhstan native.

 

Bivol isn't Russian either.

 

Ukraine IMO

 

He'd say he was Kazakh. I met a woman in Florida last month who was from Kazakhstan and she was gushing about GGG as
a national hero. Not a Russian hero, a Kazakh hero.

 

Wlad, Vitali, Loma and Usyk are hard to top.
Povetkin, Bivol, Lebedev, Gassiev, Pirog, Kovalev, Maskaev. A lot of decent fighters there but nothing sticks out to me as close to the top Ukranian guys. Esp. when you include other Ukranian fighters like Postol, Kotelnik, Senchenko etc., good but not great fighters.
Poland has Adamek, Golota, Fonfara, Dariusz, and Diablo.

It's Ukraine then Russia and Poland can be argued. I had more fun watching the Polish fighters esp. Diablo, Adamek, Golota.

 

What Kazakh heritage? He is 3/4th Russian and 1/4th Korean, he has no Kazakh heritage

 

He fights for Russia even when it is against his benefit to do so. As Russian as they come, down to the spirit.

 

Yeah, you could argue he spent some years of his life in Kyrgyzstan, but if I remember correctly most of his amateur career happened after he moved to Russia. Not sure how he feels about it.

 

Bivol moved at 11 and was born into the USSR. idk, up to him whether he is Russian or not but he competed for Russia a lot.

 

There is zero question mark about GGG’s nationality. He’s from Kazakhstan - end of discussion.