By Dmitry Mikhalchuk

Anthony Ogogo of the United Kingdom made big waves earlier today by winning a razor thin decision over heavily favoured Ukrainian Ievgen Khytrov in a round of 16 in the middleweight division of 2012 London Olympics.

Ogogo was very lucky to find himself on the right side of a double tiebreaker, which has followed after the official scores were tallied to the 18-18 draw. The initial countback favored none of the boxers (52-52), but the second one defined Ogogo as the official winner.

The loss has been met with a very expressive reaction from Ukrainian boxing experts, coaches of the national team and from the fans. Khytrov propelled to the very elite last year when he won the gold of the 2011 world championship. A protest followed the Ogogo loss but is was dismissed by the AIBA, which stated there was no grounds for such a complaint.

Meanwhile, not only did Khytrov fall victim to what can be defined as (at the very least) a “home cooking” tally on the initial scorecards, which didn’t reflect the heavy amount of the power shots and hits by the Ukraine boxer, including two standing eight counts, but he also fell a victim the ridiculously low mathematical skills of the judges. The first countback which had led to a draw, had been carried out with a school-like arithmetical mistake, which can be easily seen on the official page of this match-up.

Indeed, summing up the shot scores for each of the fighters, we get the following tally: Khytrov – 2+3+3+7+6+7+10+8+7=53; Ogogo – 5+5+5+6+5+6+7+6+7=52.

At the end we have: Khytrov – 53, and Ogogo – 52! Nevertheless, the British fighter was been declared a winner contrary to all possible rules of boxing and the own rules of AIBA.

It appears that nothing is changing in amateur boxing with its ridiculous level of corruption and overall madness, which can only be compared with the Middle Ages.

Tags: Amateur Boxing