Emmanuel Agassi

Emmanuel B. Aghassian (ایمانوئل آغاسی), Anglicized as Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi (born 25 December 1930 in Salmas, Iran), is a former boxer and the father, and former coach, of Andre Agassi.

Born to Assyrian [1] and Armenian parents (however in his own words, his father was an Assyrian Armenian from Kiev and mother was a Turkish Armenian[2]), he was raised in a Christian Armenian household in Tehran.[3] One of his ancestors changed his surname from Agassian to Agassi to avoid (unspecified) 'persecution'.[4] 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.[5]

After he emigrated to the United States in 1952,[4][6] he changed his name to Mike Agassi, a name that he was fond of. He met Elizabeth Dudley while living in Chicago, Illinois, and they married in August 1959.[4] They moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and had four children, the first three of whom Agassi has described as "guinea pigs" in the development of the methods he used to mold Andre into a world-class tennis player. His book The Agassi Story was published in 2004.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Andre Agassi". PersianMirror. PersianMirror. 2004. Archived from the original on May 23, 2009. Retrieved May 23, 2009.
  2. ↑ Cobello, Dominic; Agassi, Mike (2004). The Agassi Story. Toronto: ECW Press. pp. 12–14. ISBN 1-55022-656-8. Retrieved October 22, 2012.
  3. ↑ "How To Be Good". The Guardian. September 3, 2006. Retrieved January 26, 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 Nahigian, Frank. "Only in America? An Interview with Mike Agassi". The Armenian Weekly. Retrieved September 9, 2014.
  5. ↑ Emanoul Aghasi at Sports-Reference.com
    "Iran Olympic Tradition". NBCOlympics.com. NBC Universal. 2008. Archived from the original on May 23, 2009. Retrieved May 23, 2009.
  6. ↑ Jensen, Jeffry (2002) [1992]. Dawson, Dawn P, ed. Great Athletes 1 (Revised ed.). Salem Press. p. 17. ISBN 1-58765-008-8.


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