Boxing Trainer Michael ‘Coach Mike’ Kozlowski: “The USA has never had a Boxing School in the direct sense of this word!”

Posted on 07. Feb, 2021 by BoxingCoachMike in News

Russian – American Boxing Trainer Michael COACH MIKE Kozlowski expressed his opinion on the American Boxing School:
“I have been working as a Boxing Trainer in the USA for over 20 years and it still hurts my ears when I hear:
American Boxing School!
In the USA there has NEVER been and there is no Boxing School in the FULL sense of this word! There has never been a SPECIAL SYSTEM of training and education for both coaches and boxers!
I’m not even talking about the scientific component of this education, as it was in the USSR.
Until now, in the USA, unlike basketball, American football, tennis, WRESTLING, swimming, etc., you can count on your fingers the school and university programs related to boxing!
There was no Boxing School in the USA, but there has always been a huge mass of people in this sport!
Great Sugar Ray Robinson fought 9 fights!!! to become the Champion of one of the most popular amateur boxing tournaments in the USA, Golden Gloves!
At the beginning of our century, only at the New York Golden Gloves tournament, where my students took part, the title of Champions was contested by about 1500 boxers!
We must also take into account the fact that the massiveness of boxing in the United States has always been fueled by talented immigrants from different parts of the world! At the same time boxers and coaches with a free mentality peculiar only to the inhabitants of the United States, associated with the democratic system and the political system of the country, created their own, individual, boxing styles! One of the most striking examples of such coaching improvisation is the technique is a PEEK-A-BOO boxing style, created by the son of Italian immigrants, Cas D’Amato!
The fact that in American Boxing there is still no education of Champions in big groups (at SCHOOL it is called a class), also suggests that American Boxing has never had a SYSTEM inherent in the formation and development of the School as such! Everything was focused on the INDIVIDUALITY of the boxer, and his readiness for a professional ring!
There have never been long camps in the American Amateur Boxing, not to mention the long-term Olympic training cycles for boxers, because today’s Amateur Champions started their professional careers tomorrow!
In the late 90s and the beginning of this century, I happened to attend the training camp of the USA National Boxing Team, which were very rare, short and organized only before the largest Championships or tournaments in the World Amateur Boxing. I got the impression that these training camps were organized only in order to give boxers a national uniform, create a certain discipline in the new team and have the opportunity for the leadership from the Olympic Committee to communicate with boxers in order to rally and to some extent politicize the members of the national team before flight to other countries! After all, nobody canceled the politics in Olympic Sports!!! ”