Background
Pozniakas was born in Poland as Dan Poznyak, and in the 1950s moved to Vilnus, Lithuania, where he took up boxing at age 13.
Pozniakas was born in Poland as Dan Poznyak, and in the 1950s moved to Vilnus, Lithuania, where he took up boxing at age 13.
Monea lost to Pozniakas in the 1967 and 1969 European championships. He retired around 1969 with a record of 203 wins out of 217 bouts. In 1974 he became an AIBA international referee and later coached the national team of Seychelles in 1983-1988.
Between 1991 and 1994 he served as president of Lithuanian Boxing Federation.
He died of a heart attack in 2005, aged 65. Since 2005, and annual boxing tournament is held in Vilnus in his honor.
He won the Soviet title in 1962 and a European silver medal in 1963, but at the 1964 Olympic trials lost to Aleksei Kiselyov and was not selected. By the next Olympics he was a double European champion and a clear favorite. He decisively won his first three bouts and received the Olympic gold by default, as his opponent Ion Monea had a broken nose from his previous fight and withdrew from the final. Pozniakas became the Honoured Master of Sports of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics in 1965 and selected as the Lithuanian Sportsperson of the Year in 1968. In 1969 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
