Axel Schulz is one of the best known German boxers. The former heavyweight fought three times each for the World and European Championships and at the end of his professional career had a record of 26 victories, five defeats, one draw and one fight without a score.
On the occasion of his 50th birthday on 9 November, Schulz looks back on his exciting career in an interview with SPOX. He talks about his beginnings in the GDR, a party ruined by the fall of the Wall and his legendary duels with George Foreman, Francois Botha and Vladimir Klitschko.
SPOX: Mr. Schulz, congratulations on your 50th birthday. Is the Five in the front giving you any sleepless nights?
Axel Schulz: Not at all. I feel the same as always and I won’t make my birthday any different than other days. I get up around 6:00, drink coffee without a word – and off I go. I know it like this from sport: When you celebrate, you have to have achieved something first. I didn’t do anything to make me 50. One should rather thank my mother, who unfortunately has already passed away – and that also on a 9th of November. This is another reason why I don’t want to celebrate my birthday. My wife was a little bitchy when I told her we weren’t throwing a party for my 50th either. (laughs) We’ll have a nice dinner with our two daughters, that’s all.
SPOX: So is your birthday more of a day to deal with finiteness because of your mother’s death?
Schulz: Finiteness has been a topic for me for at least 15 years, regardless of my birthday. Some of my friends are already dead, the impacts are getting closer.
SPOX: Does the death of Graciano Rocchigiani also play a role?
Schulz: Definitely. I haven’t dealt with Graciano’s death yet. It’ll take a while. I didn’t go to his funeral either because I just couldn’t. I still can’t believe he’s gone. When the time is right, I will go to his grave alone and say goodbye. I have my problems with cemeteries, though. I was at my mama’s funeral, who died of cancer, and I never went to her grave again. It just doesn’t work. My mama died like Graciano when she was 54. I think it’s unfair, they’re not finished lives.
SPOX: It’s completely impossible to get an acceptable transition now. We wanted to talk about your career, actually.
Schulz: Absolutely right, let’s talk about other things. What do you want to know?
SPOX: For example, how did you get into boxing at the age of 11?
Schulz: Originally I wanted to become a footballer and at the age of six or seven I was also in a club. But I didn’t enjoy running after a ball. So I went swimming. But I found that just as stupid as my subsequent attempts in athletics. At some point a friend of mine took me to boxing practice. He hit me on the nose and all I thought was, “Wow. I’d like to be able to do that, too.’ From then on I trained more and more. Sometime I was so far that I could finally take revenge and hit my buddy on the nose. (laughs)
SPOX: Successes in the form of won championships have also quickly become established. To what extent did the sports system in the GDR help you?
Schulz: For me it was a stroke of luck to grow up in the GDR. Sport was promoted and was never a financial issue. So my single mom didn’t have to worry at all about whether she could pay the membership fee or not. So I could try – as just mentioned – different sports for free. Otherwise, I might never have found a way to box. At the age of 13 I finally became GDR champion for the first time and was accepted into the sports school in Frankfurt an der Oder. After three years of school, out of 18 boxers, two came through. Dirk Eigenbrodt, who later became European Champion, and I. When I was 17, I finally became Junior European Champion in Copenhagen.
SPOX: Under the wing of the legendary trainer Ulli Wegner.
Schulz: Of course my base trainer did most of the work. But Ulli was, so to speak, the selection trainer who looked after me in Denmark. His speeches in the corner were special even then. He could just get things across clearly.
SPOX: Speaking of coaches, we must not forget Manfred Wolke, to whom you owe the most.
Schulz: Right. Without Manfred Wolke I would never have fought three times in my life for the World Cup and three times for the European Championship. In 1988, at the age of 19, he made me the GDR heavyweight champion of men. I finished second at the Men’s European Championships and won bronze at the World Championships. These were already special successes at that young age.
SPOX: On November 9, 1989, your 21st birthday, a lot changed. How did you experience the day the Wall fell?
Schulz: The fall of the Berlin Wall ruined my birthday. (laughs) Back then I had a one-room apartment in Frankfurt an der Oder where I had planned a birthday party. The problem was, almost nobody came. I wondered until I finally turned on the TV. We saw that the wall was open – the rest of the guests were gone. A few days later I took the train to Berlin to pick up the welcome money. (laughs)
SPOX: Did you initially see the fall of the Berlin Wall as an opportunity for yourself, or were the events more of a shock?
Schulz: First of all: I am grateful that the wall has fallen. At the time, however, this was neither a chance nor a shock for me. For me, actually, not so much has changed at all. At the most, there was suddenly the possibility of moving to Leverkusen for DM 6,000 a month.
SPOX: But you wanted to stay with your favourite trainer Wolke and become a professional like Henry Maske.
Schulz: Exactly. I asked Wolke if he would train me as a professional. He replied, ‘Axel, I don’t know if we’ll succeed or not. But we’ll just train like pigs and see if that’s enough.’ Today I’m incredibly grateful to him. By the way, it was very important that we both got an offer from promoter Wilfried Sauerland. I got DM 2,000 a month back then. The plan was to try for two years. If I hadn’t been successful then I wanted to work as a mechanic, which I had learned in the GDR.
SPOX: What kind of mechanic would you have become?
Schulz: You can’t say that exactly. That was in the GDR an apprenticeship as a mechanic for everything, I think. (laughs) I might have been able to fix TVs later.
SPOX: Can you really fix anything today?
Schulz: Nope, I’ve forgotten that. In the meantime my wife has even forbidden me to do anything manual at home. I can’t even drill holes. (laughs)
Page 1: Axel Schulz on the death of Rocchigiani, his beginnings and the fall of the Wall
Page 2: Axel Schulz about his duel against Foreman, false friends and Klitschko