From Russia with gloves
From St Petersburg orphanage to the ‘conqueror of boxing’
When Paula and Marcel Driessen travelled to St Petersburg, Russia, to adopt twin boys from one of the city’s Soviet-era orphanages, they had little idea they would be returning with “Hercules, the conqueror, a legend”.
Some 12 years later, when the 14-year-old Andrei had been drinking alcohol for three years and smoking synthetic cannabis and weed to alleviate the boredom of West Auckland suburban life, the Driessens were probably still unaware a “legend” slept beneath their roof.
He was not an easy kid.
“F*** no. I was ruthless. I still am ruthless,” says the baby-faced Andrei Mikhailovich, a “stage name” he adopted to spare his high-profile rescue paramedic father the embarrassment of some of the stuff he said and did.
“I was like 11, 12, I was a baby man. I would go to the alcohol cabinet, grab a bottle, open it, drink that, get tipsy, like the feeling, keep doing it, fill the bottle before my parents came home.
“I smoked Kronic, weed, but drinking was my biggest problem because it was so easy to get.
“A lot of it was curiosity, boredom, bad influences. From 11 to 14, I had no drive, no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Bored. That’s when I found boxing and found a drive because I thought boxing was the best thing since Jesus Christ.”
Even at this early juncture in his story, you might be able to tell that when Mikhailovich gets on a roll, he’s hard to stop. If he has a filter, it’s set somewhere between not working and off.
“He’s as mad as a snake,” says promoter Liam Lonergan, “but in a good way.”
At the Henderson Valley bespoke gym of his trainer Isaac Peach, Mikhailovich is dishing up chapter and verse, streams of consciousness mixed with snappy soundbites.
He’s rolling, much like he hopes (“knows”) his 15-0 professional boxing career will continue to do when he faces the biggest test of his nascent career next month.
Mikhailovich has been named on the undercard of the Paul GallenJustis Huni blockbuster on June 16 in Australia. He will be matched with unbeaten local Alex Hanan in a superwelterweight clash that will be touted as one of the highlights of the night.
Mikhailovich, a natural middleweight, is confident, as is his camp, who believe they can have their fighter ranked in the world’s top 15 by year’s end.
His boxing story might have just started but there was an awful lot that went on before that.
For whatever reason, Andrei and his twin brother Nikolai spent the first 18 months or so of their lives unwanted. It doesn’t matter much to Andrei how or why they came to be in an orphanage in Russia’s second-largest city and old imperial capital.
“My mum and dad couldn’t have kids so they went looking and we cropped up.”
Mikhailovich knows nothing about his natural parents. Nor does he want to. His love and respect for his adopted parents shimmers, though he could have made life easier for Paula and Marcel, mum and dad.
“I was not good at school. I was not academic. I’m not like an idiot. I’m not dumb. I just got so bored at school and I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish. If you give me something to do here and I see something interesting happening there, I’m off just like that.”
Andrei’s brother Nikolai, who lives with him now, has learning difficulties and they grew up with an adopted sister with high needs. Of the three kids, he was the most equipped to deal with the vagaries of life but instead seemed intent on wasting it.
What he thought he wanted to do was get drunk and forget about life for a while. There was no future in that. What he needed was something to devote his boundless energy to.
He found two things, both, in different ways, forced on him.
Mikhailovich’s relationship with boxing started with one of those badly-written-script scenes that you’ve seen in a dozen fight movies. It starts with an, “Oh man . . .” and a sheepish look.
For a guy who has an intravenous connection to bags of confidence, he is uncharacteristically embarrassed.
“It sounds corny but it actually happened,” he says.
“I went to Liston College, and between that and St Dominic’s [College], there is a walkway. I was walking down there and this bully, this dude, this tall guy from Waitakere College bumped me off. I looked at him and felt so defenceless.
“I asked my parents where the nearest boxing gym was and started going there. That was that. When I got into boxing, all that shit just stopped — all that mucking around, playing around. I just wanted to be a fighter.”
The other thing that happened shortly after that incident was he was asked to leave school.
As an unqualified 16-year-old with a low attention span, statistically his prospects were not bright, but Mikhailovich is the poster-child for how humans have a capacity for change.
“I did an engineering apprenticeship. I was still a boy but I had to learn how to become a man. I had to learn how to pay bills. I had to pay for my own food. I had to figure shit out. I had to grow up really, really quickly.”
For some time, the engineering looked a more realistic career pathway than the ring work. His amateur career was decent, but there was nothing that screamed “legend”.
“When I turned pro, that’s when I really excelled. I put that on Isaac as well. When I met him, that’s when I really started to believe. He’d say, ‘You’ve got the skills, you’ve just got to back yourself’. That’s when I became Andrei.”
Peach, the self-styled boxing Westie plumber, has become a huge presence in Mikhailovich’s life after the two met in inauspicious circumstances at an amateur event.
“I always knew about Isaac but I was scared shitless of him. He’s intimidating,” Mikhailovich says. “I heard he needed some sparring for one of his pros. I asked him if I could come to his gym to do some sparring.
“I must have done okay because he told me to stay. He told me I had a home there if I wanted it. Our relationship is funny. I love Isaac, he’s my brother, he’s my everything. He loves me, too, but the relationship we have is that when I’m in the gym, everything he says, goes. I don’t question him, I don’t backchat him.
“I needed a dominating figure in my life; someone to put fear into me. Growing up, I was never scared of anything. To have someone like that was really important to me.”
There are three more people who have made a massive impact on the fighter’s life. Mikhailovich met Ursula at a party the night of his fifth professional fight. He beat Jessie Nikora with a thirdround KO but not before he’d had his nose relocated.
“This is a good one,” he says, embracing this part of his life story.
“The doctor comes into the dressing rooms and says, ‘Do you want to get that straightened?’ I knew I was seeing Ursula that night, so I was like, ‘Man, you have got to straighten this nose.’
“He gets this towel over my face and there was this . . .” — Mikhailovich draws a noise from the back of his throat that sounds a little like the noise a truck might make when the clutch slips as you’re changing from second to third.
“All night, I had blood pouring down my face but I had to go and see her at this party. By that stage, I don’t drink or smoke or anything like that, but I turned up with a T-shirt covered in blood. That’s how she met me.”
He calls her his wife even though they are yet to marry because, well, it’s just easier.
“We got together and found out we were having a baby fairly soon into our relationship. I was at a point where I was still like a child. I was a baby myself. I was quite immature. When I found out I was having a child, I grew up in a matter of months,” he says, clicking his fingers for effect. “I went from being a youthful, full-on, little prick to a young man with responsibilities.
“It focused me and pushed me to get my apprenticeship done. Having my kids is the biggest blessing for me. They’ve given me so much structure and discipline because I have to provide for them. I’m the only breadwinner in the house. If I don’t go to work and go to training, we’re going to be in a cardboard box.
“I’ve got to work, man.” When he talks of child-rearing responsibilities, there is a clear yet unspoken reference to the fact he and his brother were the product of people who had neither the tools nor the wherewithal to raise them.
His determination to provide a big room in his heart for his kids, aged 20 months and 3 months, is writ large.
They have a house. Those four words carry a lot of meaning for Mikhailovich. It’s in Sunnyvale, a West Auckland suburb locked in between the Oratia Stream and the Waikumete Cemetery.
“We have a nice, warm house that has air-con, which I’m really proud of. It’s the coolest thing ever; you turn it on and the whole house heats up. I’m really happy about that.
“I’ve got Google Chromecast — it’s pretty gangster. The simple things, man. I did that.”
He’s going to drop his engineering work hours back a little to prepare for the Hanan fight. For once, he can afford to. The purse is good compared with what he has fought for in New Zealand.
“It takes a bit to pay off a mortgage, and after a fight here, you’re good for a couple of weeks, but that’s it.”
Despite having spent all but the first 18 months of his life in New Zealand, Mikhailovich will more than once refer to his roots, particularly when it comes to aspects of his fighting style. The Driessens’ nurture might be what he cherishes above all else, but the nature was forged in Russia’s northwest.
“The Russian. I’m just the Russian. That’s it. The Russian is an aggressive, strong, fast, articulate fighter. Laser sharp. I can do everything. I can’t do everything well, but I can do everything. I can brawl, I can box, I can fight, I can counterpunch.
“If I had to say I fight like someone . . . even though I hate to say it, if you watch Arturo Gatti, you watch me, the styles are similar. But I don’t get hit as much as Arturo Gatti.”
Canadian Gatti — Mikhailovich’s
3-month-old son is named Arturo — was one of the most entertaining fighters in history, but died in suspicious circumstances in Brazil when just 37.
Whether he was murdered or died from his own hand, it is indisputable that Gatti was hit too many times in the head during his 49-fight career.
This is as good a time as any to introduce you to Mikhailovich’s goals. They are not modest.
“I could say world champion but everyone would say that. It’s more than that. I want to be the conqueror of boxing. I want to fly higher and faster than anybody. I want to be the biggest thing ever. I want to be the best fighter ever.
“I don’t want to cap anything. I just know I can go so far. I know I can be Hercules, a conqueror, a legend. That’s all I want to do.”
When you get to a certain age and just getting to Friday feels like a notable achievement, there is a part of you that wants to lead Mikhailovich to a quiet corner and counsel him on the value of perspective.
But at the same time, there’s an even bigger part of you that borrows from his vernacular and thinks, “F*** it, let the kid dream”.
“Believing in yourself is the most important thing in the world,” he says. “It seriously is. It’s not even, ‘I believe I can do this,’ it’s ‘I know I can do this.’ It’s trust. I believed in myself, I knew I could do things.
“If I’m 100 per cent confident and
100 believe, people know. That’s just the truth. If I was talking to you and I was like, ‘I’m this and I’m that’ and I didn’t believe it, you’d sense it. You’d be like [sniffs] ‘Man, this kid smells like bullshit.’ But if I believe it, you’re like, ‘Maybe we’ve got something here’.”
Mikhailovich is still young. He might have a long way to go, but then again, in many ways he’s already there.
“I’m 23. I’m a fully-qualified engineer. I’ve got my own place, I’m the New Zealand middleweight champ, the super welterweight champion, I’ve been signed by Dean Lonergan, I’m fighting in Australia.
“I’m adopted from Russia. I’ve done a lot in my life.”
I smoked Kronic, weed, but drinking was my biggest problem. It was so easy to get. Andrei Mikhailovich