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Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi (born Emanoul Aghassian; December 25, 1930 – September 24, 2021) was an amateur boxer, casino worker, tennis coach, and the father and coach of American tennis player Andre Agassi. He was born in Iran which he represented at the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics. After moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen, he won the Chicago Golden Gloves three times.
Mike Agassi | |
|---|---|
| Born | Emanoul Aghassian December 25, 1930 |
| Died | September 24, 2021 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | Iranian American |
| Occupation(s) | Boxer, tennis coach |
| Spouse |
Elizabeth Dudley (m. 1959) |
| Children | 4, including Andre |
Agassi was born in Salmas, Imperial State of Iran to Armenian parents David and Noonia. His father was a carpentry business owner from Kiev, Russian Empire who moved to Tehran, Iran's capital, during the Russian Revolution. His mother was from Ottoman Armenia and met his father during a family visit to Tehran, and decided to stay with him.[1] He was raised in a Christian household in Tehran.[2] One of his ancestors had changed his surname from Aghassian to Agassi to avoid Ottoman persecution.[3]
Agassi was first exposed to tennis by American and British servicemen. He represented Iran as a boxer in the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics, losing in the first round both times.[4] His trainer was the retired Polish-German boxer Hans Ziglarski.[5]
He followed his brother Samuel to Chicago in 1952,[3][6] and changed his name to "Mike Agassi". Less than a month after graduating from Roosevelt University, he met Elizabeth Dudley through a common friend. They married at a Methodist church in Chicago's North Side on August 19, 1959.[7] When a friend offered Agassi a job at the Tropicana Hotel, the couple moved to Las Vegas with their two-year-old daughter Rita and eight-day-old son Phillip in October 1962;[8] daughter Tamara (Tami) was born in 1967 and Andre in 1970.
Agassi described Rita, Phillip, and Tami as "guinea pigs" in the development of the methods he used to mold Andre into a world-class player. In 1984, Rita, having rebelled against her father's 5,000-balls-a-day-regimen, married Pancho Gonzales. In his autobiography Open, Andre recalled Mike and Steffi Graf's father Peter nearly coming to blows arguing over whether Andre or Steffi had the superior backhand technique when Mike showed Peter the machine he built to fire tennis balls at Andre and his siblings.[9]
Mike Agassi's autobiography The Agassi Story was published in 2004.[10] He died on September 24, 2021, at the age of 90, in Las Vegas.[11][12]
Below is the record of Emmanuel Agassi, an Iranian bantamweight boxer, who competed at the 1948 London Olympics:
- Round of 32: Lost to Alvaro Vicente (Spain) on points
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