Akın Kuloğlu

Kuloğlu Akın ( born February 6, 1972 in Kutaisi, Georgia; † August 20, 2001 in Chicago, United States) was a Turkish boxer.

The tall (1.95 m) middleweight ( 75 kg) was in May 1993 Vice World Champion, after he had at the World Championships in Tampere against Kestutis Dsedarawicius from Lithuania (3:1), Ahmed Dine from Algeria ( 5:3 ), had prevailed Andreas Bredler from Sweden ( Ko) and Vasily Shirov from Kazakhstan ( 9:2 ) and almost only lost in the final against Ariel Hernandez from Cuba with 7:9. The following month, he also won the gold medal at the Mediterranean Games in Narbonne. He defeated while the Italian Raffaele Bergamasco and in the semifinals the Greeks Ioannis Kokkolis on points, and in the final the Tunisians Muhammed Lassoued by Ko in the first round. In September of the same year, he still managed a bronze medal at the European Championships in Bursa. After victories against Ľudovít Plachetka from the Czech Republic ( 10:5 ) and Zsolt Erdei from Hungary ( Ko), he retired from the semi-final against Alexander Lebsiak from Russia ( 3:12 ).

In August 1999, a bronze medal followed at the World Championships in Houston, after defeating Jerson Ravelo, USA (Co ), Ladislav Kutil, Czech Republic ( 4-0) and Vyacheslav Burba, Kazakhstan (6:1) and only in the semi-final against Adrian Diaconu, Romania ( 2:10 ) lost. Thus he had qualified for the Olympic Summer Games in Sydney, where he against Mariano Carrera, Argentina ( Ko) and Jung- Bin Lim, South Korea ( Ko), reached the quarterfinals. In the fight for the semi-finals and thus secure a medal, he missed by a 8:18 point defeat against Wugar Alakparow, Azerbaijan.

Akın Kuloğlu died in 2001 as a taxi driver in a traffic accident in the United States.