István Kovács (born August 17, 1970), nicknamed Ko-Ko or sometimes The Cobra, is a Hungarian retired world champion boxer. He is a Secretary General of the International Boxing Association (AIBA). As an amateur, he won the bantamweight gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics, and was a world champion at the 1991 World Amateur Boxing Championships in flyweight and at the 1997 World Amateur Boxing Championships in featherweight. He was a world champion as a professional, winning the WBO featherweight title in 2001. Amateur career Kovács was born in Budapest and began his sports career as a football player, training among others in the youth team of MTK Budapest. He started boxing relatively late at the age of 15 in EVIG SE. He moved to Vasas SC in 1988 where he was trained by Gyula Bódis. His first international success also came in 1988 when he won the junior-flyweight gold medal at the Junior European Championship in Gdańsk. He soon started to dominate the lower weightclasses on the Hungarian scene among such rivals like Olympic bronze medallists János Váradi and Róbert Isaszegi, and in 1990 he was already a member of the Hungarian team at the World Cup in Dublin where he won a silver medal. In 1991, already as a flyweight, he won the gold medal at the European Championships in Gothenburg and later that year he also won the World Championship in Sydney. Due to his outstanding achievements he was elected as Hungarian Sportsman of The Year the end of the year, ahead of competitors like legendary medley swimmer Tamás Darnyi who was elected as that year's World Swimmer of the Year and wrestling world champion Péter Farkas. Kovács's spectacular boxing style and nice personality soon made him a crowd and media favourite, and he was widely considered one of Hungary's top gold medal chances at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. He easily outpointed his first three opponents, but in the semi-finals he was surprisingly upset by Choi Chol-Su from North Korea. Choi, who defeated other future professional world champions Paul Ingle and Robbie Peden in his two previous bouts, went on to win the gold medal and Kovács had to settle for the bronze which was considered by many to be a disappointment at that time. After the Olympics Kovács's career seemed to decline. He broke up with his long-time trainer and continued with Imre Szántó