Damiani, Francesco

Francesco Damiani was born on October 4, 1958 in the small town of Bagnacavallo, located in the administrative region of Emilia-Romagna. Acquaintance with boxing happened quite late. The brother brought our hero to the section when he was 16 years old, and the first official duel Francesco held at the age of 17. But since the guy was very physically gifted, sporting successes soon did not slow him to come. The first time Damiani became the champion of Italy, when he was not yet 20, in 1978. Then Francesco has repeatedly confirmed the title of the strongest boxer of the country in his weight. In 1979, he was already included in the national team of Italy. And just a year later, Damiani was among the participants in the Moscow Olympics.

At his first major international tournament, Francesco failed to prove himself as it should. In the 1/8 finals he managed to cope with the Romanian Theodore Pyrol with a score of 4: 1. But already at the stage of the quarter-finals, Damiani, in the opinion of all five side judges, “one gate” lost to the Soviet tyazh Pyotr Zayev , who then became the silver medalist of that Olympiad. But this defeat did not break the young boxer, and already literally a year later Francesco celebrated his first significant success in the international ring. At the European Championships, which was held in Tampere in Finland, Damiani won the gold medal, beating 5–0 in the final of a strong Soviet super heavyweight, Vyacheslav Yakovlev .

Francesco was also close to winning gold at the 1982 World Championships held in Munich (Germany). In the quarter-finals of this particular tournament, Damiani won his biggest victory not only in the amateur ring, but also, perhaps, in his entire boxing career. Legendary Teofilo Stevenson our hero contrasted the only correct tactics. Francesco, like Igor Vysotsky twice before him, imposed on a tall Cuban an unpleasant short-range battle for him. Beware of Stevenson's crown-killing blow to the right, Damiani, overlapping the block, approached him and already at a safe distance for himself, taking advantage of his physical strength and power, tried to crush the Cuban with powerful sweeping side blows from both hands. Stephenson was suddenly lost under such pressure, his counteractions were ineffective, moreover, the Italian, anticipating dangerous attacks for himself, often tied him in the clinch. As a result, with a devastating score of 5: 0, victory in this battle was given to Damiani.

Having easily passed in the semi-final of Bulgarian Petar Stoymenov, Francesco had to play the gold medal with the American Tyrell Biggs . The latter turned out to be a real evil genius for Damiani throughout his amateur career. Overseas jabber not only won him in the decisive match of the World Cup - 1982 with a score of 4: 1, but two years later deprived Francesco of his dreams of winning the Olympics, as well as in the third match between them - at the match meeting in Los Angeles 1984 inflicted the Italian defeat. But still later, already in pro-ring, Damiani got even up with his offender. But this happened years later, and, returning with a silver medal at the world championship, the following year, our hero triumphantly finished playing at two major international tournaments at once.

First, in May in Bulgarian Varna, Damiani confirmed the title of the best boxer of the Old World in the heavyweight title. And then in October he became the winner in the World Cup held in his homeland, in Rome. In the finals of those competitions, Francesco defeated American Craig Payne with a score of 4: 1. From the transition to the pro our hero kept only the prospect of winning a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. In addition, those Games boycotted the countries of the socialist camp, so that meetings with strong boxers from Cuba and the USSR were not threatened by the other participants. But, inflicting early rivals on stage 1/4 and 1/2 on his rivals, Damiani again hit Tyrell Biggs in the final. Francesco recalls that after another defeat (with a score of 1: 4) from his old uncomfortable rival, he simply wanted to hang his gloves on a nail, without even turning into professionals.

He made his debut in 1985 with Aloe Gobo, who was knocked out in 3 rounds.

Damiani conducted his battles mainly in his homeland, in Italy, only occasionally boxing in the USA. Among the rivals Francesco in the early years of speeches in the pros were not loud famous names. He was most carefully led to the tops of world rankings by the most experienced and most authoritative Italian manager and promoter Umberto Brancini , who was admitted to the membership of the two main Hall of Fame of world boxing - IBHOF and WBHOF. Achieving early victories, Damiani consistently defeated Eddie Gregg and won the WBC international title. Then defeated Anders Eklund and won the European title.

In October 1988, the fight took place with Francesco Damiani and Tyrell Biggs . Round 1 began with the intelligence of the jabs in the long distance, in which Biggs replayed his opponent, but at the end of the round Damiani went ahead and leveled the position. Round 2 was held in the middle and near distance with a slight advantage Damiani. Both fighters managed to shake each other in this round. With 3 rounds, Damiani began to dominate the battle, breaking the distance and punching powerful series. In the 5th round, after one of the attacks, Biggs had a cut, the Biggs angle decided to stop the fight.

Shortly after defeating Biggs, Damiani held another defense of the European champion title, after which he went out to fight for the world champion title in May of 1989, the WBO heavyweight title was won between Francesco Damiani and white South African Johnny Du Pluy . An African in the weight of the Italian tried to fight at the expense of maneuverability and high-speed work at long distances. But he only managed to do this until the middle of the third round, when the massive Damiani got him with a killer three-stroke combination in his head left side-right cross-left side. The hollow fell down under the ropes and failed to rise until the end of the countdown of the referee.

In December 1989, Francesco held the first title defense. His opponent was the unbeaten Argentinean Daniel Eduardo Neto managed to hold out against the shock power of the Italian only incomplete two rounds. After several falls, the Argentinean meeting was stopped.

Then, having spent two non-title victorious fights, in January 1991, Damiani set off to hold his second defense of the title in the USA, in which his rival was to become the champion of the 1988 Seoul Olympiad, at that time unbeaten American Prospect Ray Mercer . Despite the external non-athletics and even some mistake, with which he always stood out, Francesco boxed for his weight rather quickly, competently and technically. So, in a battle against a tough and hard-hitting Ruthless Mercer, Damiani acted mainly from a distance, jumping up to his opponent, inflicting several precise blows on him and either retreating or collapsing into the clinch. This tactic brought the Italian success. After the eighth round, Francesco confidently led all three side referees on the cards with the scores 79-73, 79-74 and 78-74. But at the end of the 9th round, an extraordinary event occurred that rarely happens in boxing matches. A left uppercut thrown by Mercer was tangential to the front of Damiani. The blow did not hit the chin, but the Italian broke his nose. Francesco fell and could not continue to fight not from shock, but from the hellish pain that accompanies such injuries. Thus, Damiani lost his champion title.

In his next fight in November 1991, Francesco had the chance to fight for the title of absolute world champion. The fight between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield was originally scheduled, but Mike broke his rib during the training session, and Damiani was nominated as a substitute. But then Francesco was injured during the preparation for the fight, thus depriving himself of the opportunity to become a world champion in prestigious versions, and a large fee. As we know, the final replacement for Holyfield in that fight was his compatriot Bert Cooper .

After that, Damiani remained in the ring for another two years. His two final fights was a points victory over former world champion Greg Page and a technical knockout in the eighth round from future world champion Oliver McCall . After losing to Atomic Bull, Francesco decided to hang the gloves on a nail.

For the general public of boxing, the name of the Italian champion surfaced in the early 2000s: from 2002 to 2006, Damiani was the second coach of the Italian national amateur boxing team. Having trained many coaching tricks from the then Italian team headed by Nazareno Mela, Francesco replaced him as the head coach of the national team of his country.
Under the leadership of Damiani, Italian amateur boxers have achieved very good results at major international competitions. At the 2007 World Championships in Chicago, the Italian boxers in the two heaviest weight categories - Clemente Rousseau in weight up to 91 kg and Roberto Cammarelle in weight over 91 kg - won gold medals. At the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, the Italian national team turned out to be a complete set of three medals of different denominations: Gold won Kammarelle, Rousseau's silver, and Vincenzo Picardi won the bronze medal. At the 2009 World Championships in Milan, the Italian team reiterated their Chicago success - super heavyweight Cammarelle and lightweight Domenico Valentino became world champions ^[1] .

• Damiani, Francesco (English) - statistics of professional fights on BoxRec site