Andre Agassi is world renowned as one of the greatest tennis champs of all time but not so well known is that boxing is actually in his blood. “The Punisher” – as Agassi was called by peers during his playing career for his systematic breaking down of his opponents’ games with patience, power, consistency and superb conditioning – is the son of a 1948 Olympic boxer – Mike Agassi, who represented Iran before emigrating to the United States.
In his new autobiography which is titled “Open,” Agassi compares tennis to boxing: “Tennis is boxing,” writes the man who won at Wimbledon, the French Open, Australian Open and US Open, as well as the 1996 Olympics. “Every tennis player, sooner or later, compares himself to a boxer because tennis is non-contact pugilism. It’s violent, mano a mano, and the choice is brutally simple as it is in any ring. Kill or be killed. Beat or take your beat-down.”
Agassi also reveals in the bio some personal information that also reflects highly on the Sweet Science. Agassi divulges the romantic setting where he took his future wife Steffi Graf out on their very first public date…it was ringside at the Oscar De La Hoya- Felix Trinidad fight in Las Vegas. The two tennis champions married not long after and now have two children together.