Vitali Klitschko’s Biodata and Religion, Legendary Ukrainian Boxer Who Successfully Became Mayor of Kiev

Get to know more closely Vitali Klitschko . He is a former owner of the WBO heavyweight championship belt who is now Wali Kota Kiev .

Klitschko was known to be very good at kickboxing as a child, and he put on his first pair of boxing gloves at the age of 13. He was scheduled to represent Ukraine in boxing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but those plans fell through after he tested positive for steroids and was kicked off the team.

His brother, Wladimir, who followed Vitali into amateur boxing, replaced him and won the super heavyweight gold medal. The brothers made their professional debuts at the same bout in Hamburg, Germany, in 1996, each scoring a knockout victory.

Klitschko lost for the first time on April 1, 2000, when he suffered a torn rotator cuff muscle during a fight with American Chris Byrd, resulting in a technical knockout defeat. Britain’s Lennox Lewis stopped him with punches in a thrilling WBC heavyweight title defense on June 21, 2003.

After Lewis retired, Klitschko claimed the vacant WBC title, but a series of injuries led him to announce his retirement on November 9, 2005, after making only one defense. He regained the WBC belt upon his return to the ring on October 11, 2008.

Klitschko and his brothers are among Europe’s leading sports stars, and their reputations extend beyond the ring. The Klitschko brothers both earned Ph.D.s in sports science, earning them the nicknames “Dr. Ironfist” (Vitali) and “Dr. Steelhammer” (Wladimir).

The duo were also the subject of a feature-length documentary, Klitschko (2011). Outside the ring, Vitali played a key role in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which brought President Viktor Yushchenko to power.

Vitali Klitschko Likes to Clash with Volodymyr Zelensky

But that success did not mean that his plans to become mayor of Kiev would be smooth. Klitschko had failed twice in his candidacy. In 2010, he became the leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR; its acronym in Ukrainian is spelled “punch”).

UDAR performed impressively in the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, winning 40 seats and establishing itself as a major force in opposition to President Viktor Yanukovych and the ruling Party of Regions. Klitschko relinquished his WBC title and retired from boxing in December 2013 to devote his time to Ukrainian politics. He emerged as one of the leaders of the protest movement on Kyiv’s Maidan (Independence Square) and helped negotiate a settlement that ended the government’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators.