Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov

There are more (multi) Olympic medal winners who never went pro, some just don't have it in them, others have high paying jobs, and some get injured.
In this case I have no idea. Maybe he expected to be joked about because of his name. Maybe his father was a proud member of the Communist Party, and he wants nothing to do with fighting professionally. :huh

He did expose Lacy before Calzaghe did though!

 

He was sadly never able to come up with a suitable nickname.

One can only dream of what his legions of fanatical followers would have been dubbed.

 

Disappointed he never went pro. He schooled everyone in Athens. He destroyed Golovkin who had destroyed everyone he faced.

Taylor, N'Jikam, Erdei, Lacy. He really was top drawer stuff.

 

He sounds like a Euro-level fighter, I'm sure he would of won belts at multiple weight classes.

 

Easy, easy! Winning a couple of Olympic medals doesn't make you an "Euro level fighter". There's a lot more to it than that! He would probably beat the sh#t out of the top Ameri-Cans, but Euro level is not so easy to reach! :bart

 

Pro boxing is very weak in Russia, no monetary backing to go pro or the kind of sponsorship to stage expensive events, and despite some developement in the past couple of years, there hasn't been a breakout. So like with Cuba, the best stay in the amateurs and just a very few go pro, and they have to travel for all important fights. Povetkin fights out of Germany, Korobov out of the USA, Lebedev travelled to the UK and Germany, Pirog to the USA for the biggies, same with Provodnikov. Someone like Gaydarbekov would've had a very hard time breaking through and become popular in a foreign market starting at age 28 and prizefighting is business first.

As Mike Tyson said, Russia and the former Soviet countries have the best athletes they just never go pro. There was Gaydarbekov and now there's Tishchenko who's also an awesome fighter, but it seems he's ending his boxing career at 26 due to some sort of injury I believe.

 

My gaydar is twitching

 

Come on man. Easily? If it was just turning up at a foreign promoter why would they miss out on such opportunity? It is not. No matter of the amateur achievements they still need a market and whereas Filipinos start out at 16-17 in the very crowded South-East Asian pro boxing scene for lunch money, and like one out of 1000(0) break through with some luck and likely early losses - you can't expect a Russian amateur star to be an 'opponent' for 1500 Dollars and you definitely don't expect top promoters bringing former amateur greats as 'opponents', so it's a dead end. It's a WHOLE different thing to the SE Asian scene. There most turn pro not by choice but by need of money to survive and you don't see many coming through during the years and years of fighting. Today in The Philippines several networks put major money into pro boxing and it has a very healthy scene whereas Russia there's no TV backing nor a healthy pro scene to get started out, nor the time for a 27yo former amateur to spend long years waiting for a breakthrough.

If you want to turn pro, you either start locally with some mafia-ties promoter for minimal payment and the hope of getting noticed by bigger promoters, but due to the ties you'll always give half your purse away (like Valuev), or you get signed by a big foreginer promoter in the 1st day otherwise you don't have much chance, and you don't go to the promoters, they come to you.

 

He's Euro-level.

I believe Vasyl Lomachenko is gonna turn pro after the London games. He's already the real deal and will be a P4P star.deal:deal