Adrian Teodorescu arrived in Canada from Romania in 1982. “When I talked with these guys in Canada I told them, I said ‘listen guys, you can't stop me coaching.

“If I am coaching, I am happy. If you throw me naked in the Sahara, I will train salamanders and snakes and they make Canadian champions.”

Glancing around his office, it’s not hard to believe.

His desk is littered with detailed charts tracking the performance of his boxers—sleep patterns, diet, weight, blood pressure and attendance. A set of keys hangs from one of about half a dozen trophies scattered haphazardly around the room.

A raised boxing ring dominates the centre of the warehouse where the club practises. The walls are covered with motivational quotes, posters and a home-made photo collage. One sign says, “Unacceptable behaviour will result in banishment.”

Flags from 14 different countries hang from the ceiling. Among them are Cuba, Sweden and Japan.

Teodorescu is the head coach and founder of Atlas Boxing Club in Toronto and says his system of coaching is the most comprehensive in Canada. He says he’s unhappy with the standard of boxing instruction in the country.

“If your grandmother wants to become a coach, she goes to Boxing Ontario and registers as a coach,” he says. “She attends the course and she comes in the morning—you bring her because she can’t walk right?—you bring her here and at four o’clock she’s a boxing coach.”

“It’s very hard for me to swallow this thing.”

As the president of the coaches association in Romania, Teodorescu says he inspected the country’s boxing clubs. “I went to your club and I asked you, ‘Can you show me your attendance?' and you said ‘ What attendance?’

“I said, ‘I’m sorry my friend, we might be friends, you might be my colleague, but this month you get 25 percent off your salary.’”

Teodorescu pushes his students hard, says Domenic Filane, one of his former students. Under Teodorescu’s coaching, Filane won the Canadian championships 10 times and competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games.

Filane says he started boxing during college to get in shape and after a few weeks’ training, Teodorescu called him into his office. Teodorescu then set out goals for Filane’s boxing career.

Teodorescu told him they were going to win the Ontario and then Canadian championships. He said after that, they would compete in the Commonwealth Games to get experience and then go on to the Olympic Games.

“This guy’s setting out these dreams and for me they didn’t seem realistic until a few of them started coming true and then he sort of looked at me and said ‘See? I know what I’m talking about,’” says Filane.

Even so, Teodorescu says he doesn’t admire overconfidence. “I don’t like it when people say ‘I’ll do this, I’ll do that’ because they walk in the ring and pow,” he says punctuating the sentence by slamming his fist into his palm.

“I like to talk after the fight, not before the fight.”

When people ask for predictions he tells them to ask him again after the fight.

All told, Teodorescu says he was involved in nine Olympic Games. In 1988, Lenox Louis and Egerton Marcus, both his students, won gold and silver respectively. Four years later, his students won silver and bronze.

“Ever since that result, only one medal was coming out from the Olympics,” he says.

Teodorescu started boxing in Romania at age 11. After each practice, his coach would give out a sugar cube to each student at the door. “I think because I was so skinny and that, he gave me two.”

Teodorescu says that when he was a kid, fights were common. “I had a big fight with a guy who was a wrestler champion,” he says. “I told him, I said, ‘You will never be able to catch me to wrestle me because I’ll run away. I beat him up.’” No one wanted to fight him after that.

When he talks about boxing, Teodorescu’s eyes light up. As he leans across the desk to show off his curriculum, you can hear the enthusiasm in his voice.

“Boxing is everything for me. Boxing is my profession. Boxing is my life. Boxing is my hobby. Boxing is everything.

“I cannot say I am a scientist in biology but I can say I am a scientist in boxing.”