By Jake Donovan

The 2008 Olympic boxing tournament came to a close Sunday afternoon in Beijing China, with finals taking place for the remaining six weight classes. None of what took place on the day, however, would factor into who was named the Games’ top boxer.

All told, nine separate nations took home Gold among the 11 different weight divisions.

Perhaps overshadowing Team USA’s worst performance in its Olympic history is the fact that not a single Gold medal was won by a member of Team Cuba for the first time in 40 years.

Boasting home court advantage, it was assumed to be the best ever year for Team China. They held true to form, going 2-1 on the afternoon in claiming two Gold medals, their first two ever in Olympic boxing competition.

The first on the afternoon came from Zou Shiming, the odds-on favorite to win the light flyweight division regardless of where the Summer Games were taking place. Shiming didn’t disappoint in that regard, even if his Gold medal-winning bout against Mongolia’s Serdamba Purevdorj was a bit anti-climactic.

Shiming struggled to a 1-0 lead after one round, but how many points he would or wouldn’t score became moot when Purevdorj pulled up lame in the second. His right arm was injured to the point of his being unable to lift it, forcing a stoppage just 19 seconds into round two.

If nothing else, Shiming can now claim to have not allowed a point in five days, though Ireland’s Paddy Barnes obviously didn’t agree with the 15-0 scorecard posted at the end of Friday’s semifinal match with the Chinese super talent.

Barnes became the latest in a lengthy line of boxers and boxing personalities to attack the inept scoring system featured in this year’s competition. He will most likely be joined by light heavyweight teammate Kenny Egan, who dropped an 11-7 bid to China’s Xiaoping Zhang in a bout that saw Olympic scoring at its very worst.

Far too often, Zhang was given credit for scoring opportunities for punches landed by Egan, particularly when countering. The action denied Egan what appeared to be a brilliant come-from-behind performance, instead providing an insurmountable lead late in the third and all the way to the end of the fight.

Zhang’s win gave China two boxing Gold medals; a tally that would be matched by Team Russia after Alexei Tishchenko won the lightweight division as expected.

What came as a surprise was the close nature of his win, as Tishchenko was forced to dig deep to pull out an 11-9 win over France’s Daouda Sow.

Tishchenko tore through the featherweight division en route to a Gold medal in the 2004 Olympics and had previously wreaked similar havoc at lightweight in this year’s competition. That was until the first round of his fight with Sow, which ended with the Russian leading by just one point.

The lead would never expand very far beyond that. Sow was only down 10-8 after three rounds and managed to pull within one early in the fourth round. It was as close as he would come to pulling off the upset, though, as Tishchenko scored his only point of the round with just 12 seconds left to provide the final two-point margin of victory.

As dominant as Tishchenko has been in his amateur career, it still would’ve taken a Herculean effort in order for the Russian to outdo Ukraine’s Vasyl Lomachenko in the 2008 Games. The squeaker over Sow only confirmed a foregone conclusion, as Lomachenko was awarded the Val Barker Trophy, given out to the most outstanding boxer of the Olympics.

Fittingly, Lomachenko won the awarded by barnstorming through the same division Tishchenko claimed four years prior in Athens.

The bantamweight division was dominated by first-time Olympian Badar-Uugan Enkhbatyan, who gave Mongolia its first ever boxing Gold medal – and in fact that country’s second Gold medal of any competition. His achievement came ten days after Naidangiin Tuvshinbayar claimed the top prize is his weight class in Judo competition.

Enkhbatyan might not be known for his kicks, but certainly kicked ass in this year’s Games, outscoring his five opponents by a 70-15 margin. Padding the tally was his 16-5 drubbing of Yankiel Leon, one of four Cuban fighters who would be forced to settle for Olympic Silver.

Leon joined teammates Andry Laffita (flyweight) and Emilio Correa (middleweight) in the second place circle, with the country’s last hope of Olympic Gold resting on the shoulders of welterweight Carlos Banteaux.

The weight of a nation proved to be too daunting of a task to carry, as Banteaux was handled by Kazakhstan’s Bakhyt Sarsekbayev to the tune of an 18-9 rout in the welterweight finals.

Sarsekbayev emphatically put to rest the myth that body punching isn’t rewarded in the amateurs. It was with a relentless body attack that he overcame a 1-0 first round deficit to not only take the lead, but force the Cuban out of his envelope and into his desired fight.

A 7-0 second round gave Sarsekbayev a six-point lead that would only grow with each passing round. Banteaux danced as hard to rally, but most of his shots were picked off by the Kazakh boxer, who gave his country its only Gold medal.

It was still one more than Team Cuba, who failed to claim the top prize in any division for the first time since the 1968 Games in Mexico. The streak excludes the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, both of which were boycotted by the nation.

Despite being denied Gold, Cuba still took home the most boxing medals of this year’s competition, racking up eight in all – four silver and four bronze.

Italy only claimed three, but saved the best for last as super heavyweight Roberto Cammarelle became Public Enemy #1 after knocking out Zhang Zhilei in the final Olympic boxing contest of the day and of 2008.

That Zhilei made it to the finals was an upset in and of itself, with China not counting on the biggest member of its squad to even medal. Despite overachieving in his three previous bouts, Zhilei was no match for Cammarelle, who led throughout and put the proverbial cherry on top with a left hook in the fourth that functionally ended the fight.

Zhilei peeled himself off of the canvas, but was in no condition to continue, forcing a stoppage 19 seconds into the fourth and final round.

It was the lone loss on the afternoon for China, who took home four boxing medals in total – two Gold, one Silver and one Bronze, trailing only Cuba on the overall boxing leader board. Their pair of Gold medals tied Team Russia for the most by any nation, with seven other countries winning one Gold medal apiece.

China joined Mongolia and Dominican Republic as first time boxing Gold medal winners in this year’s competition.

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

Jake Donovan is a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .