Guido Vianello: Rome’s Top Boxer

Guido Vianello’s life was set. 

The Rome native had capped off a stellar amateur career with an appearance for Team Italy in the 2016 Rio Olympics, and the next step was a job – seemingly for life - with the police department.

It was the path taken by Vianello’s Olympic predecessor, 2008 gold medalist and 2012 Olympic silver winner Roberto Cammarelle, who decided that job security and a pension was a better call than rolling the dice in the Wild Wild West of professional boxing. Vianello understood his former teammate’s decision and respected it. 

“You can do boxing in Italy, go into the police or army as a boxer, and you have money for all your life,” he said. “You do boxing, and when you stop, you have your job. In Italy, it's the first dream - the job and money for life." 

But the heavyweight hopeful had other dreams, and he made headlines when he left the police force to move to the United States and chase after a world title in the pro ranks.

“In Italy, the first big news about me was that I pulled out from the police, left the Italian boxing team and I signed with Top Rank, and moved to America,” said Vianello. “So, for the Italian people, it was like, ‘Wow, he's strong,’ because nobody had the courage to decide to do this. But everybody was scared that I left everything.” 

It is a scary proposition because in boxing there are no guarantees. Sure, Vianello signed with one of the premier promoters in the sport in Bob Arum’s Top Rank, he’s trained with the likes of heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and top contenders Joe Joyce and Joseph Parker, and he’s a raw talent with the 6-foot-6, 240-pound frame to give anyone a tough night. But all it takes is one bad outing to start an irreversible slide. The 28-year-old is well aware of this, but when it comes to the risk-reward ratio of his decision, he’s willing to chase greatness.

“If you want to get good things in your life, big things, you have to take your risks,” Vianello said. “If you don't want to take risks, you can get nothing. To the Italian mind in my country, we have everything. We have 2,000 years of stories, a lot of things, we have the beautiful sea, the beautiful mountains, the beautiful food, we have everything. So we don't want the risk. In Italy, we have everything; we just want good money for our life. But I'm different. I want to become a heavyweight champion. And I know if I want to get there, I have to play hard, I have to play the boxing business, so my life is this. When my manager told me about Bob Arum and Top Rank, I told them, if everything is real, I'll come tomorrow with you. And I did.”

So far, so good for “The Gladiator,” who has compiled a 10-0-1 record with nine knockouts since his debut win over Luke Lyons in 2018. This Saturday in Verona, New York, Vianello will take on his biggest test to date in American spoiler Jonnie Rice, best remembered for putting two marks in the loss column of previously unbeaten prospect Michael Polite Coffie. He also extended this weekend’s headliner – Efe Ajagba – the ten-round distance, so while Rice is coming in on short notice to replace Stephan Shaw (who was elevated to the main event slot against Ajagba), he has the goods to spoil Vianello’s unbeaten slate. But the Italian plans to not just win but to show off the best version of himself to date.

“I said I had to build my boxing style, my mental side, so I used these years, I have 11 fights and this is year number five since I turned professional, so now I'm ready to make a big step,” he said. “This fight is at the perfect time for me because now is my time, it's my show, so I want this. I will win this fight and then we start to play this game. For now, I am training very hard, I trained every day for four years, so now I will show everything in this fight. I'm ready to go now.”

A win over Rice, which is being televised on ESPN, would be a big boost for Vianello’s career. As for “this game,” he’s ready for that as well, thanks to lessons learned from the aforementioned trio of heavyweight standouts.

“The first problem for my country is that we don't know nothing about the boxing business,” he said. “So when I came to America, I started to understand what it means. Of course, with Tyson Fury, I understood the mindset of the boxing business. I lived with Joe Joyce for one year, and with Parker for two years, so I was living with them for a lot of time, and you go inside the ring with a mindset of the business of boxing. In Italy, we don't know that. So that was the first thing I learned.”

It wasn’t easy for a young man living in a country where he had no friends, no family, and didn’t know the language, especially in a business where he had to fight every day in the gym. But it all went back to being willing to take the risks necessary to become a champion, even if that meant leaving home for California and Las Vegas.

“I was on the Italian boxing team for 10 years and I did the Olympic Games, so I started to travel when I was 15, but when I came to America, it was a lot,” Vianello said. “I was by myself, my first coach was Abel Sanchez, (Gennadiy) Golovkin's coach, so I came alone, and I came without English. So, for me, it was very difficult because nobody spoke my language and I trained very, very hard. I trained a lot of times with Golovkin, and with Tyson Fury, so I was very happy, because, in America, I can do the best for my boxing career. But I was very sad inside because it was very difficult for me. The United States is very far from my country, and everything is different.” 

Vianello laughs when he admits that finding legit Italian food in the States is a losing battle outside of one place near Big Bear Lake in California, but his time here served his purpose, and while he’s now splitting his training camp between Italy and England with coach Simone D'alessandri, the hard work doesn’t change.

“If you want to follow your dream, you have to do a lot of hard things, so it's my life,” he said. “Hard job, hard work is my life, so I'm following my dream and I'm working hard now here in England. I'm in a little city, so it's just my house and my boxing gym, nothing else. This is my lifestyle, and hard work is my lifestyle everywhere.”

He took the risk…now he chases the reward, not just for himself, but for Italy.

“The last heavyweight champion from Italy was Primo Carnera in the 1930s, so it's very important for me, and it's important for my country,” Vianello said. “Unfortunately, boxing was very popular in my country in the 1960s and 1970s because we had very good professionals like Nino Benvenuti. After those years, the boxing shows were very bad, and now in Italy, you can't see a lot of boxing. So, with this dream, I can take boxing back to Italy. If I become the world champion, my country will awake and boxing can come back like it was a lot of years ago. So it's my dream, but it's also my country's dream.”