and moved up to bantamweight, but his results did not achieve the same level as before, his best result being a bronze medal at the 1993 European Championships in Bursa and at the 1995 World Cup in Bangkok. The media also reported about party nights and personal problems, and many thought that he will never find his former self. But in 1996 Kovács came roaring back, once again winning the European Championships in Vejle, and then in the summer he finally gained the long-awaited Olympic gold medal in Atlanta outpointing Arnaldo Mesa from Cuba in the final. At the end of the year he was elected as Sportsman of The Year in Hungary for the second time. After the Olympics he was signed by the Hamburg-based professional stable Universum Box-Promotion together with the now-famous Klitschko brothers Vitali and Wladimir, to join world champions Dariusz Michalczewski, Artur Grigorian and Regina Halmich, but he opted to stay among the amateurs for one more year because Budapest was to host the 1997 World Championships, where in front of several thousand home supporters, he managed to conclude his amateur career by winning his second gold medal, this time in featherweight. He finished his amateur career with an outstanding record of 282 wins, 14 losses and one draw. Professional career Kovács began his professional career coached by former top class amateur East German trainer Fritz Sdunek in late 1997, amidst great media hype in Hungary, with one of the newly founded nationwide TV channels buying the exclusive rights to broadcast his bouts. In his first fight he knocked out Frenchman Ahmed Lain in the first round and racked up a 10–0 record within little more than one year. In his ninth bout he defeated former EBU champion Vincenzo Belcastro and in 1999 he gained the WBC featherweight intercontinental belt by defeating Nabaloum Dramane in Budapest. Due to his technical skills, fast foot- and handspeed and spectacular fighting style he was often compared to fellow 1996 Olympian Floyd Mayweather Jr. who started his long-lasting reign in the super-featherweight division at that time, and he was considered the future challenger of the unbeaten WBO featherweight champion Naseem Hamed. Kovács was to make his debut in the United States in late 1999 in Las Vegas, but in the last days before the bout his nose was broken while sparring with Bones Adams who grabbed the WBA super-bantamweight title