By Cliff Rold

Is two the loneliest number?

It just might be. Two is the total number of fighters Team USA sends to the quarterfinal round of the 2008 Beijing Games, leaving this team in a position where it can do no better than to tie the worst Medal totals in America’s long Olympic history. Three times the U.S. has left the Games with only two medals, in 1936, 48 and 2004. On only one of those three occasions, in 2004, did America manage a Gold Medal.

The U.S. has medaled in every Games where they have participated going back to the 1920 team which featured future Flyweight Hall of Famer Frankie Genaro. The pressure of the moment, and of history, will be thick as Heavyweight Deontay Wilder and Welterweight Demetrius Andrade attempt to reach the Medal rounds on Sunday.

The team’s latest loss, a one-point exit by 19-year old Light Flyweight Luis Yanez of Duncansville, Texas against Mongolia’s Serdamba Purevdorj, ended the round of 16 as a killing fields for greater American hopes.

Make no mistake. Yanez was a serious hope. He is a little man with big talent; skilled, fast, and experienced. There was every reason to believe he was on a path to face the favorite of the 106 lb. division, Zou Shiming, but that belief is aborted, replaced by bitter disappointment.

It wasn’t that Yanez fought terribly. He just didn’t fight enough in a rare entertaining battle of southpaws. He started tentatively, his southpaw stance wide and jab flaring out in gauging fashion. A brief flurry about a minute in saw the Mongolian score points with a right and left upstairs, Yanez with a lead right hand. Almost thirty seconds of both fighters staring at each other, waiting for someone to lead, when the referee stepped in cautioned both for not fighting, something one might expect to not need a caution in a Boxing match but, hey, Olympics. Two clean lefts, a few seconds apart, rocked the head of Purevdroj but only one was scored, bringing the contest to a tie. The Mongolian followed him the ropes with a flurry of missed blows before a clinch walked the bout back to mid-ring. Once there, a good ol’ fashioned 1-2 landed for Purevdorj, giving him one point and the lead. Yanez kept his distance in the closing seconds without engaging again.

Heavy activity early in the second resulted in some flashy flurries from both fighters but no points scored. Frustratingly, this was followed by nearly another thirty seconds of observation where punches might have dared. A perfectly timed left by Purebdorj caught Yanez to extend his lead to 4-2. Yanez eventually responded with a left that just missed but was not rewarded a point in the final ten seconds when the white of his left glove clearly connected with the head of his foe.

Still down two to start the third, Yanez finally came alive, fighting with urgency and controlled violence. He and Purevdorj traded points in an early flurry before the superior speed of Yanez allowed another left hand to narrow the bout to 5-4. Two more flush lefts and he led 6-5 with not even thirty seconds past. After a thrilling exchange, another thirty seconds of tedious posing became almost a full minute before a left from Purevdorj brought the score back to even and neither man scored with anything clean in the closing seconds.

The experience of the fourth could have taught Yanez a lesson about what he could do when he let his punches go in heated combination. Instead, all even at 6-6, Yanez opened cautiously before loading up with a left hand which created a perfect opening for a scoring counter left from Purevdorj. Two close call left hands didn’t go in Yanez’s favor near the one minute mark and the Mongolian’s one point edge was looming larger. A wind up and pitch of a left hand haymaker left a huge opening for the Mongolian, and he took advantage with a light, long, and highly visible lead right putting the American in the hole 8-6 with slightly more than thirty seconds left. He could muster only one more point through a series of flurries as the Mongolian wisely stayed away and moved on with his Olympic dreams.

Round Two Grade: C

As noted above, Yanez did not fight terribly. He just did not fight enough and rather than collecting himself late in the fight he went wild and let a winnable fight slip away.

The question now is what if two becomes one or, even worse, none. The long rumored tensions between Team USA’s head coach Dan Campbell and his charges has now boiled very openly to the surface. Press accounts from the AP to Time Magazine are picking up the story. The reasons for Yanez’s month long saga of departure, removal and reinstatement to the team prior to the Olympics remain undisclosed, but the relationship between he and Campbell soured long ago and Yanez’s game didn’t respond to the coach’s advice.

Lacking first, even second, hand knowledge there is no way to analyze the situation beyond knowing that whatever Campbell has done, it isn’t working and he shouldn’t be expected back. Coaching is an often thankless job and youth coaching is moreso as parents and outside influences eat away at the thoughts and attitudes of young athletes in a way that wasn’t the norm in previous generations. The too-many spoiled children of the baby boom spawned far too many even more spoiled children, raised under the umbrella of their elder generations self indulgence (after all, who but sections of Baby Boomers would be hitting their sixties and still calling themselves middle-aged?). There is no way of knowing whether such things have hurt Campbell’s efforts, but disciplinarian types standing rigid in their ways have become a tougher sell.

There is also the possibility that Campbell just isn’t a good coach.

The structure of the program also must be questioned. The U.S. is not Cuba. The idea of making the U.S. program more like programs built under authoritarian rule is contrary to the participant’s very existence as Americans. Campbell’s Camp Colorado Springs sessions have certainly been compared to trying to format after other nations, and the format just is not suited.

The causes are for consideration as the next Olympics are planned. Today, we have only the effects and Luis Yanez ends his amateur days with a sputtering finish on the way to what should still be an intriguing professional career. Team USA has two alive and fingers crossed for the chance to discuss this team further in the semi-finals on Friday.

Falling behind on your Olympic boxing intake? Catch up by clicking on the following link for the complete archive of Boxingscene.com’s unmatched Olympic coverage:

BOXINGSCENE.COM 2008 OLYMPIC BOXING CATALOG

Up Next

Quarterfinals: Deontay Wilder (Heavyweight); Demetrius Andrade (Welterweight)

Stay with BoxingScene for the best Olympic Boxing coverage on the World Wide Web

Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com