By Brent Matteo Alderson
At the global level, boxing is thriving, but on the domestic front it isn’t doing very well and the number of young fans needed to sustain its popularity seems to be dwindling. There are a number of factors responsible for this lack of growth in the States and one of those is the decline of its Olympic boxing program.
Even though as an endeavor, amateur boxing differs greatly, it still has a significant impact on the world of professional boxing. In a historical analysis of Ring Magazine’s pound for the pound rankings, there have only been two American fighters in the last twenty years that have reached the sport’s mythical position as boxing’s best pound for pound fighter without having participated in the Olympics; Mike Tyson and Bernard Hopkins.
All the other American fighters that have attained that lofty position, Pernell Whitaker (1984), Oscar De La Hoya (1992), Roy Jones (1988) and Floyd Mayweather (1996), have been successful members of a United States Olympic team.
Unfortunately the United States Olympic boxing team has performed dreadfully in the new millennium and hasn’t produced enough elite prize fighters to help sustains boxing’s popularity in this star-driven media crazed society .
In 2000, for the first time since 1948, the team went home without a gold medal and then this past summer in Beijing, only one of the team’s Olympians, Deontay Wilder, the least experienced member, came home with a bronze medal.
One medal for the United States is an embarrassment for a program that once rivaled Cuba as the world's top amateur program and its decline is one of the factors that is negatively impacting professional boxing in the United States because for the past 30 years the sport has used the exposure that the Olympians received to introduce the public to its future stars.
Really the Olympic Games are boxing’s version of the NBA draft and have been an efficient means of bringing boxing’s future stars to the forefront. Even with the marginalization of the importance of Olympic success with the multiple broadcasts and late-night showings, an Olympic Medal still enables a fighter to build a local fan contingency and allows them to use that regional appeal as a spring board for greater things.
Even with the computer scoring system that was first implemented at the 1992 games in Barcelona there still has been a strong correlation between Olympic and professional success.
Half of the members of both the 92 and 96 teams, 12 in total, became world champions and they competed in the era of computer scoring that today is often times blamed for USA Boxing’s recent lack of success.
So far by comparison the 2000 and 2004 teams have only produced two world champions in the paid ranks in a boxing landscape where there are significantly more opportunities to win a so-called world title.
So it’s no coincidence that along with the decline of the nation’s Olympic program that America’s supremacy in the professional ranks has also diminished. This is substantiated by the fact that according to prominent pound for pound polls, Paul Williams and Bernard Hopkins are the only American fighters currently ranked among the top ten pound for pound fighters in the world.
The Olympic teams still have produced some phenomenal talents, just not as many. Jermain Taylor is an excellent fighter and Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward embody the talent and boxing class that America expects from its Olympic team members.
Still in comparison with the previous teams, the last three teams have not provided professional boxing in America with a sufficient influx of new talent so that the sport can pinpoint and promote its future stars so they can endure themselves to the American public at the early stages of their careers.
There are numerous factors that have contributed to the team’s lack of success at the Olympic level. Some of them are situational and have to do with a true lack of talent that is a result of a decreasing number of amateurs in certain communities, specifically in the nation’s African American communities.
It seems as though, young black athletes are more inclined than ever to choose one of the more popular sports such as basketball or football over boxing. Julie Goldsticker, the Media relations representative for USA boxing noted “I think that particularly with bigger boxers, that with football and basketball and those [mainstream] sports, they definitely take the athletes that might have competed in amateur boxing in the past.”
Perversely trainer Henry Ramirez feels like youth-boxing is thriving, especially in the Hispanic-American community, “Every time I go to an amateur show here in Southern California it’s packed. People say amateur boxing is dying, but I don’t see it. I just went to a show the other day and there were twenty-two bouts in one day.” When asked about the demographics of the fighters Ramirez stated, “Its eighty or ninety percent Latino, but that’s’ where we’re at. So Cal is predominantly Hispanic. Los Angeles has the second largest Mexican population in the world right after Mexico City so that’s what you’re going to get.”
Besides the lack of amateur talent which can be partly attributed to the diminishing involvement of America’s non-Hispanic youths, there are a number of systematic problems with our Olympic program.
In an interview with BoxingScene.com, Andre Ward commented, “there are a lot of things that need to be changed in USA Boxing, some political. The United States has always been a dominant force and right now we aren’t."
"I don’t think it’s the scoring, the other countries are adapting so we need to adapt. We need to put the team together further out. We change every year, the way they structure the training camp, how long the training camps are, who the coaches are, and to me that equals instability. Every other top country that wins, Russian, Cuba and so on have set coaches, have a set plan and those kids know if they win, they are going to have to adapt to that system.”
Fortunately after the team’s horrendous showing this past summer, USA Boxing is looking inward and is serious about implementing changes in order to move the program in a positive direction. USA Boxing’s Julie Goldsticker commented, “We had a coaching symposium last week where we pulled in the coaches to the Olympic training center and picked everybody’s brain and what they feel like is the best direction to go in and when you pull thirty coaches in one room there are definitely a lot of opinions flying around, but we are trying to get input from people that have had success."
"We really want to work on our alumni outreach. And try to get some of the athletes that have come to our program to come back and give their time to these young boxers, they have so much knowledge, and I know the young boxers really look up to them. So we are working on getting some of our alumni back to come help our young boxers to give them knowledge and experience inside and outside the boxing ring to help us move forward. We are really open to any thoughts and ideas and suggestions to move forward and have a better showing in London and beyond.”
After hitting rock bottom after only securing one Bronze Medal this past summer, despite having two world champions on the team in Rau’shee Warren and Demetrius Andrade, there’s only one direction in which Team USA can go and that’s up.
And the United State’s prospects in 2012 are already looking considerably better since for the first time in history the team will have two boxers that have already had Olympic experience in Rau’shee Warren and Reynell Williams, with Warren being the first American boxer to ever compete in three Olympics. Goldsticker notes,”I think just to have Rau’shee’s presence in there with a lot of the younger kids is going to be helpful. Just having him around to tell the kids what its like to compete in the Olympics is going to have a huge impact.”
So hopefully with Team USA’s commitment to change and the two experienced Olympians as anchors, the United States will once again return to prominence in 2012 and help spark a professional boxing revival by not only bringing exposure to a new group of talented professionals, but by also introducing the sport to another generation of kids watching the Olympics at home, “A lot of times what happens people watch the Olympic Games and want to pick up whatever sport it is. I’m sure swimming’s numbers have gone up since Beijing,” commented Goldsticker. Go Team USA!
Notes:
Favorite Quote:
After Duran upset Davey Moore for his 3rd world title on his 32nd Birthday, Gil Glancy commented on the CBS broadcast, “It was a master against a kid with 12 fights!”
Margarito seems like an upstanding guy and doesn’t seem like the type to knowingly try to cheat, but if there indeed was something on his padding that hardened it and would have made the gloves even more destructive, I think Margarito should also be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This is a safety issue, this is about the lives of thousands of boxers that to a certain extent are already risking their lives and if someone part-takes in illegal behavior that increases those risks then an example should be made of them and a precedent should be set that it will not be tolerated. If a substance that hardened the padding was prevalent on the gloves and you just slap the hands of Margartio and his trainer, then you are slapping the face of every boxer in the world.
Howard Davis was the only member of the 1976 Olympic who turned professional that didn’t win a world title.
Davis beat Aaron Pryor out for a spot on the team that year.
Davey Lee Armstrong (1972, 1976), Robert Shannon (1980, 1984), and Rau’shee Warren (2004, 2008) are the only boxers in history to earn spots on more than one U.S Olympic boxing team.
Bob Arum’s Latin fury card in Tijuana on March 28 should be exciting. I wish they would add Valero to the card.
Michael "the Bounty" Hunter’s son, Michael Hunter is one of the United State’s top amateur heavyweights and he’s only 20 years old and started boxing at the age of 14. His father never became a world champ, but he was a top heavyweight/cruiserweight and beat Tyrell Biggs, Pinklon Thomas, and Dwight Muhammad Quawi. Keep an eye on Hunter, a lot of the sons of pugilists do well in the pros especially when their fathers never achieved the type of success that provided them with economic security. Felix Trinidad’s father fought Salavador Sanchez and Roy Jones Senior fought Hagler.
Andre Ward is so talented. Not too many guys can switch back and forth from an orthodox to a southpaw stance as smoothly as he does. The kid is ready for a top ten opponent. Seriously I know a lot of fans are down on Olympians, but I think if you win a Gold Medal, in most cases you’re already one of the top fifteen fighters in your weight class in the world.
Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?” Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com