NEW YORK -- Two reputed Russian mobsters face mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole after they were convicted in the kidnapping and murder of a former member of the Soviet national boxing team.

Alexander Nosov and Vasiliy Ermichine were convicted Wednesday in Manhattan of racketeering in the death of Sergei Kobozev, 31, who immigrated in 1991 and lived in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors said Nosov and Ermichine were members of a violent Russian organized crime group known as the "Brigade" when they kidnapped and killed Kobozev in 1995.

Natan Gozman, a third defendant charged in the murder, remains a fugitive.

Sentencing was set for May 6.

Kobozev had been a captain in the Russian army and was a chemical engineer in St. Petersburg before he made his name as a cruiserweight on the Soviet national boxing team and later with 16 knockouts in a professional career.

The 6-foot-1, 190-pound fighter won the U.S. Boxing Association cruiserweight championship on June 30, 1994, defeating Robert Daniels.

The mob turned against Kobozev because he worked as a part-time security guard at a Brooklyn restaurant from which Nosov was ejected after a fight with a musician, prosecutors said.

Several days after the fight, the defendants and a third member of the gang unexpectedly encountered Kobozev at a car repair shop, where they confronted him about the fight before Nosov shot him, authorities said.

Still alive, Kobozev was put in a jeep and driven to the Livingston, N.J., home of a high-ranking member of the crime group, where his neck was broken by Ermichine after Kobozev asked to be taken to a hospital, prosecutors said.

His body was buried in a shallow grave, where it was found by the FBI in March 1999.