By Cliff Rold

20-year old Welterweight Demetrius Andrade of Providence, Rhode Island came into the 2008 Beijing Games as one of America’s two best hopes for Gold, a defending 2007 World Amateur champion with the size, speed, power and experience to advance.  He still has all those assets and is sure to use them to his benefit in the professional ranks.  He will do it without a Medal of any kind. 

By two points against South Korea’s 27-year old Jungjoo Kim, a 2004 Bronze Medalist at 152 lbs., Andrade joins seven fellow Americans on the outside looking in as national anthems are played for men with hardware next Saturday and Sunday. 

Team USA has secured a place in history with Andrade’s quarterfinal loss on Sunday but it is not a history they wanted.  Regardless of the eventual outcome of Heavyweight Deontay Wilder’s quarterfinal performance, the 2008 U.S. Olympic Boxing Team goes down in history as the nation’s worst performing pugilism team.

Ever.

It wasn’t all their fault and what is so hurting is that the team was nowhere near that bad.  This was, on paper, America’s best team since the 1996 squad that went home with six medals (five bronze, one Gold) with two reigning World champions and three other strong contenders.  No American squad since the 1920 competition had ever left the Olympic stage without capturing at least two Medals.  Andrade’s loss guaranteed that bit of ignominy and while there could, and should, be tremendous argument with the scoring of his bout, he ultimately is left knowing a better start might have meant a better finish.

Blessed with a tremendous advantage in speed, the obvious beginning for Andrade would have been to circle the ring, snap the jab, and start working the left hand from his southpaw stance.  He got the circling part right, but the punches were few from both men. 

How bad was it? 

At the thirty second mark, both Kim and Andrade were cautioned by the referee for not fighting.  Thirty second later, a full minute into the round, they were cautioned for the same sin again.   Andrade was occasionally jabbing while largely waiting for Kim to lead presumably so he could counter; Kim was throwing nothing at all waiting for the same.  The audience was just waiting for them to stop waiting.  They did with Andrade letting loose a missing left and beginning a pursuit.  In the final ten seconds, Kim let his hands go and received a point though it was unclear exactly which punch landed and the round ended with the American down 1-0.

His coaches implored him to throw more in round two and Andrade got a point for a lead left but received no score for two clean right hooks to the body while Kim received a point for a right hand and got his lead back.  They traded clean power hand points and a beautiful counter right from Andrade landed flush to the jaw near the thirty second mark followed by a right to the body, neither of which scored while Kim got a point for a right to Andrade’s glove to go up 4-3.  Andrade then scored with a right and left uppercut, the left cleaner, and got no points before a longer left from outside got him to within one.

Kim and Andrade traded points cleanly to start the third but a solid shot downstairs was unnoticed for Andrade while the Korean again scored with the right.  Another right to the body, the sort of punch Andrade was scored on regularly in his previous fight, went unscored before a left got him his fifth point.  Kim scored a counter right on a wild missed lead uppercut from Andrade and another right put him up 8-5.  Andrade scored with a slick right but a long clean left got no point and he needed to overcome a two-point deficit to win.

They trade clean point to start another round and Kim was denied the point on his own clean body shot.  Andrade was denied again on a left that pushed back the head of Kim before a right from the Korean made the fight 10-7.  A straight left made it 10-8 and a clinch left Kim on the floor.  A clean right from Kim failed to score before Andrade, fighting frantically, pulled within one going upstairs.  Denied yet another point for flush body work, Andrade would fall behind by two yet again off a glancing right from Kim.  The score would stand in that position, 11-9.  

Quartefinals Grade: B

Even in the loss, Andrade could well have received an A had he been as assertive in the first round as he was the rest of the way.  Regardless, he reaches the end of an otherwise outstanding amateur career.  Two U.S. National titles, two National Golden Gloves titles and a World title are nothing to sneeze at but none of those are the Olympics.  Andrade was understandably disappointed after the bout, citing again the U.S. frustration with the Olympic scoring.  He makes a hell of a point, perhaps a bad choice of words considering how many were denied him.

Even so, his behavior after the bout was unbecoming.  Rather than wait in the ring while Kim was formally announced the winner, Andrade left the ring before the official announcement and stalked off towards his interview, earning a chorus of boos.  Andrade was not the first fighter who felt robbed in these Games.  Win or lose, rightly or wrongly, he owed it to Kim to behave like the fighting man after the fight he had been during the action.

It is in moments like Andrade’s post-fight walk-out that we remember how young some Olympians still are.  The tears in his eyes both after the fight and in his interview showed how bad he wanted it and so there can be no grudge held by viewers.  Coach Dan Campbell defended his charge and railed against the scoring calamities that have befallen both the U.S> and a Russian team which has been on the wrong end of some jaw droppingly bad decisions.  Campbell’s anger, and Andrade’s, was at least justified as this scribe counted some eleven shots that never made the scoreboard.  Kim also was not awarded some earned points but not enough to make up that deficit. 

Andrade threw more and landed more.

Andrade goes home.

While the bulk of the judging the Games really hasn’t been as bad as the chatter, this was.  Judges who cannot score clean punches should not be there and they missed them repeatedly for Andrade just as they had in the round of 16 for Raynell Williams. 

One can only wonder at the pressure Heavyweight Deontay Wilder carried into the ring for his quarters match, knowing that no American team had ever gone without medaling at all.  His effort will be reviewed and before the eyes of loyal readers next. 

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)

 

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