He was not top tier guy...Most of you probably don't know who he is but I met him a few years ago at a card in Rochester....He lost that night but was still a good sport about it...He was a hell of a nice guy...Shame he was young and during the holidays to boot...
I was caught by surprise when I read this
Boxer Killed Trying To Calm NYC Bar Fight,
Last Edited: Sunday, 31 Dec 2006, 7:54 PM EST
Created: Sunday, 31 Dec 2006, 7:54 PM EST
NEW YORK -- Kemal Kolenovic was a boxer with five knockouts to his name, but he wasn't looking for a fight when he was killed outside a Bronx bar, police and witnesses said.
Instead, he was run over after trying to break one up, police and witnesses said.
Kolenovic, 28, was at the Moonlight Restaurant and Bar, near Belmont and Crescent avenues, when several other men got into an argument about their native Eastern Europe around 4 a.m. Sunday, police and witnesses said.
Kolenovic, who immigrated from Montenegro, followed the men outside but didn't plunge into the dispute, according to the police and witnesses. An uncle said the fighter tried instead to soothe their tempers.
But then one of the men involved in the quarrel got into a sport-utility vehicle and drove it onto the sidewalk, hitting Kolenovic, witnesses and police said. The driver fled, police said.
The boxer was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital, police said.
"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Tony Kalaj, a spokesman for fight promoter Joe DeGuardia's Star Boxing. The company was promoting a match in which Kolenovic hoped to fight later this month, Kalaj said.
Kolenovic, a 5-foot-7-inch middleweight, won his most recent fight with a first-round knockout in mid-December at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., according to online boxing journals. The Brooklyn boxer's overall record was 10 wins _ with five knockouts _ six losses and two draws, online records show.
"He was one of the toughest kids I ever trained," said one of this trainers, Raymond Paolillo. "He would never back down."
Acquaintance Kenny Frljuckic said the fighter had stopped by his barber shop two days before his death, enthusing about his knockout win in Kings Point.
"He was a good person," Frljuckic said, "a sportsman."
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