By Scoop Malinowski

Heavyweight contender Andrew Golota competed at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea as a heavweight boxer for Poland. The spirit of the Olympics and being apart of the global event are fond memories which Golota still cherishes. “It was an unbelievable experience,” he says. What memories pop in his mind first? “The athletes village was like a big square, a place to hang out, a lot of people. Beautiful girls, beautiful people. It was amazing. The village was right next to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was so big, it had all the foods in the world. I always ate there. I was living there,” he says with a chuckle. “It was the best cafeteria I have ever seen, they had everything there. I still remember it and it was 20 years ago. I still remember everything, how it looked there.”

Golota could not indulge his appetite as much as he would have liked because he had to make the heavyweight limit at weigh-ins before each of his Olympic matches. Golota, who amassed 111 amateur wins in his career, had a first round bye, then defeated Svilen Rusinov of Bulgaria and Harold Obunga of Kenya by identical scores of 5-0.

The worst part of the Olympics for Golota was, “going through security, they check everything, everywhere you go.”

Currently ranked #6 by the WBA and #9 by WBC laments that he was not able to check out other sporting events because he was too busy with the boxing competition which lasted most of the fortnight. “I didn’t have much time to see the other sports. To see other sports you had to drive everywhere, everything was played in other places. You had to have tickets and you had to order tickets.”

Andrew adored the city of Seoul. “Seoul was beautiful, they had great street markets. They had beautiful leather jackets there. The funny thing was if they didn’t have the size of you for a suit or shirt, they took the measurements and the next day they had the size for you. Usually it takes two or three days. There it only took a few hours.”

Back then, Golota did not have to go through a grueling trial tournament to qualify for the Olympics for Poland, like the Olympic Trials here in the U.S. He was selected. “That day we didn’t have to qualify. The country is the one who sent you over there.”

Golota remembers seeing many of the boxers, such as “Kostya Tszyu was there, Roy Jones Jr., Riddick Bowe. Lennox Lewis was there. I was shocked when I saw Bowe. Because three years before he was a light heavyweight. I saw him in Europe at a tournament and he was 175 pounds. Then he skipped over heavyweight all the way to super heavyweight. He must have ingested, gained so much weight.”

Golota arrived in Seoul a week early. “We got there a week before for the time change, to acclimatize. Every day you had to watch your weight. I had to lose five pounds.” Golota made the semifinals where he faced a big, strong, lantern-jawed Korean named Baik Hyun-Man. It was a competitive fight, but Golota received a cut from the left-hander and the referee stopped the bout in round two, against the wishes of Golota. Still, he won a bronze medal which sits on his shelf at home. Baik Hyun-Man was defeated by Ray Mercer in the gold medal bout.

The Olympic bronze medal was supposed to be the end of his boxing career. Golota stopped boxing, then married an American citizen and moved to Chicago. His wife had a baby daughter and Andrew passed the test to become a truck driver. But before beginning to drive the truck, Golota decided to train in a boxing gym in the Windy City and the trainers there were awed and mesmerized by the skills Andrew showed. The rest is history.