‘Extreme concern’ for the future of boxing in the Olympic Games
How loud does the alarm bell for Olympic boxing need to sound, asks John Dennen
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COULD the alarm bell sound any louder? It became unavoidably clear at the last Olympic Games that the administration of the sport needed wholesale change. Not only did the standards of officiating and drug testing need to be addressed but the governance of AIBA, the world governing body, was a severe problem. It remains so, and yet AIBA seems hell bent on lurching towards disaster and dragging Olympic boxing with it.
Once again the International Olympic Committee has had to publicly declare that boxing is still at risk of being expelled from the Olympic Games as soon as 2020.
Ching Kuo Wu has been ousted as AIBA president. But there was widespread concern when Gafur Rakhimov was made interim president. Rakhimov has been sanctioned by the US Treasury department no less. He is running for election to continue as president and AIBA has now revealed that he will stand unopposed. It seems inevitable therefore that he will become president at the AIBA Congress on November 2-3 in Moscow, Russia. Rival candidate Serik Konakbayev, whom England Boxing was backing, appears to have failed to attract enough support in time for the September 23 deadline to run in the election. (It’s understood though that Konakbayev will attempt to appeal this.)
The executive board of the International Olympic Committee made clear its “ongoing extreme concern with the grave situation within the International Boxing Association (AIBA) and its current governance. These include the circumstances of the establishment of the election list and the misleading communication within the AIBA membership regarding the IOC’s position”.
Their statement continued: “Such behaviour is affecting not just the reputation of AIBA and boxing but of sport in general.
“Therefore, the IOC reiterates its clear position that if the governance issues are not properly addressed to the satisfaction of the IOC at the forthcoming AIBA Congress, the existence of boxing on the Olympic programme and even the recognition of AIBA as an International Federation recognised by the IOC are under threat.”
The imminent risk of boxing being thrown out of the Olympics is very real. This would be devastating. Not only is it the pinnacle of amateur boxing and part of the sport’s rich history, it underpins professional boxing that, in many ways, is thriving today. The lucrative sport is undergoing a boom in Britain for instance where so many of the professional stars are Olympic medallists, or Olympians, or enjoyed the support of national Olympic programmes.
Even now it is outrageous that those boxers who committed themselves to the Olympic sport after Rio 2016 have this doubt cast over their careers and their futures. It’s bad enough that two years on the men’s weight divisions for Tokyo 2020 are yet to be confirmed, while the qualification process has not even been announced.
The hope has to be that the IOC won’t punish the boxers. The executive board did add in their statement: “At the same time, we would like to reassure the athletes that the IOC will – as it has always done in such situations and is currently doing at the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 – do its upmost to ensure that the athletes do not have to suffer under these circumstances and that we will protect their Olympic dream.”
Perhaps that indicates that if the IOC refused to recognise AIBA some new alternative body could run boxing at the Olympic Games. But there are no further details on what such an organisation might be.
There has been no sign that the internal strife at AIBA will abate. Their executive committee has decided to ban former president Wu and former executive director Ho Kim for life due to “gross negligence and financial mismanagement”. That will be presented to the Congress in November to ratify. In another vote AIBA executive committee member Franco Falcinelli was suspended. The current AIBA executive director Tom Virgets said, “Now it is up to the national federations to make the final decision, but the Executive Committee needed to act now, especially as this situation has threatened to influence the upcoming election for AIBA leadership positions. The Executive Committee simply felt that enough was enough in terms of misinformation and deceit in a time where everybody in AIBA should be working together for the best of boxing.”
While these disputes rage, the sport as a whole is plunged ever deeper into crisis. We all need worry about what’s best for boxing.
You are assuming those guys wouldn't have become stars on their own & sooner in some cases if they had been made through adversity in the pro game vs an anointing through winning an amateur boxing tournament.
I would agree the road is harder & more competitive, but its also more honest & genuine .
They've been removing parts of it for awhile already. It used to be a bigger tournament. Thus harder to win. It used to have more weight divisions.
Its sorta crazy to me the Olympics has so much power over amateur boxing that they've killed weight divisions. When I first started watching amateur boxing there were 12 divisions now there are just 10. I'd rather go to the World Championships or the WSB finals being the highest level amateur event & it has 12 divisions again.
These guys are fast tracked to titles, and fame, and they have already established themselves as the most skilled in the world at the amateur level, and it very very frequently transfers to the pros.
You think any of them would be where they are now if they started their careers as unknown club fighters?
You think Andre Ward with his ugly style would have ever gotten any breaks, and had to work a 9-5 inbetween training to support himself while he worked his way up the ranks, getting jobbed on the cards by house fighters along the way?
Boxing is littered with immensely talented fighters who had to go on the road and lost all the decisions they should have won.
You are assuming those guys wouldn't have become stars on their own & sooner in some cases if they had been made through adversity in the pro game vs an anointing through winning an amateur boxing tournament.
I would agree the road is harder & more competitive, but its also more honest & genuine .
They've been removing parts of it for awhile already. It used to be a bigger tournament. Thus harder to win. It used to have more weight divisions.
Its sorta crazy to me the Olympics has so much power over amateur boxing that they've killed weight divisions. When I first started watching amateur boxing there were 12 divisions now there are just 10. I'd rather go to the World Championships or the WSB finals being the highest level amateur event & it has 12 divisions again.
These guys are fast tracked to titles, and fame, and they have already established themselves as the most skilled in the world at the amateur level, and it very very frequently transfers to the pros.
You think any of them would be where they are now if they started their careers as unknown club fighters?
You think Andre Ward with his ugly style would have ever gotten any breaks?
I actually hope boxing in the Olympics ends. I think it'll make the World Championships a bigger tournament & make the WSB thing bigger. I think those are better formats for boxing anyway. The Olympics is epic no doubt, but its been shrinking mens boxing & enhancing womens boxing which no one gives a f#ck about not even women.
Granted the "Gold Medalist" or "Olympian" hype going into the pros will be a thing of the past & that potential high Q rating coming into the pros won't be a thing anymore either, but I think thats always been bs anyway & I think boxing is better when stars are formed organically. Too much of boxing is about making a certain guy a star vs putting the best guys in the ring to organically create stars which is what happens in all other sports EXCEPT boxing pretty much.
And thats one of the big structural problems with boxing...uncompetitive matchmaking & this 4 year plan to a title which usually includes 2-3 years of fighting what I call setup fights, where the guy who's supposed to win is a 80/20 favorite or better to win, for most promising, sellable guys vs just moving guys as they deserve to be moved up & finding stars through resistance not through arranged marriages, so to speak, with big name promoters who'll cleverly move them up the rankings. And without the Olympic hype I think more promoters will have to do just that. Build their stars through adversity & trials by fire.
What you are missing is that Olympic medals mints stars. Ali, Frasier, Foreman, Klitschko, Lomachenko, Ward, Joshua, Povetkin, Rigondeaux, Wilder, Mayweather, Golovkin, Lewis, Leonard, RJJ... etc. The list goes on and on.
Its these young fighter first real exposure infront of a large TV audience.
How many of us saw Lomachenko win his first gold and wanted him to turn pro immediately. Then we saw him win his second, and we were all salivating for him to turn pro.
With that said. Aiba is irreparably corrupt, sells medals, and needs to have its recognition rescinded with a provisional body run by the olympic committee put in place to handle the qualifiers and boxing in the olympics until an organization that can prove that it is operating above board via external audits appears.
It would be a travesty to remove one of the original olympic sports.
This would seriously dent the sport as a whole. Not having the Olympics as a carrot for young boxers would damage grassroots boxing and the appeal of the sport. Amateur's work for years and enter all these international tournaments with the Olympics as the end goal..... funding would be cut as well.... the future talent pool would be cut.
Lets hope this doesn't happen and amateur boxing can sort out this mess.
maybe. amateur boxing aws not as robust in past times, and pro boxing thrived and was invariably better. lots of europeans and cubans squander the primes of their lives as amateurs.
getting aiba out of boxing will only be a good thing. this probably is't a good thing for boxing, but hold your horses and wait until we see what it actually looks like. it's a massive, massive incentive for talented young boxers to turn pro ASAP, and to fight and train in a pro style in their youth.
I think boxing is all but done. COuntries around the world are focusing money on the sport while the American governing body looks to make women's sports and "x games" type events more prevalent since the US tends to win those.
Boxing isn't even on primetime anymore and that used to be the marquee event. I know US fighters haven't been dominating as they once did but that doesn't mean the sport should be eliminated.
I actually hope boxing in the Olympics ends. I think it'll make the World Championships a bigger tournament & make the WSB thing bigger. I think those are better formats for boxing anyway. The Olympics is epic no doubt, but its been shrinking mens boxing & enhancing womens boxing which no one gives a f#ck about not even women.
Granted the "Gold Medalist" or "Olympian" hype going into the pros will be a thing of the past & that potential high Q rating coming into the pros won't be a thing anymore either, but I think thats always been bs anyway & I think boxing is better when stars are formed organically. Too much of boxing is about making a certain guy a star vs putting the best guys in the ring to organically create stars which is what happens in all other sports EXCEPT boxing pretty much.
And thats one of the big structural problems with boxing...uncompetitive matchmaking & this 4 year plan to a title which usually includes 2-3 years of fighting what I call setup fights, where the guy who's supposed to win is a 80/20 favorite or better to win, for most promising, sellable guys vs just moving guys as they deserve to be moved up & finding stars through resistance not through arranged marriages, so to speak, with big name promoters who'll cleverly move them up the rankings. And without the Olympic hype I think more promoters will have to do just that. Build their stars through adversity & trials by fire.
I see where you’re coming from. It’s part of the reason guys from Mexico tend to be such good all around pros and its because they go pro VERY early and tend to forego a long amateur career to get into the pro ranks.
But that’s a third world country and in places like the phillipines or mexico, it’s not always by choice so there’s arguments for every side.
I’m for the olympics and love the tradition and boxing is true global sport thats perfect for the olympics. I think it would hurt to not have it and having an olympic gold medal is sometimes seen as a fighter’s greatest accomplishment despite having won world titles.
I can see the argument though for letting people naturally develop into prize fighters by actually prize fighting.
Losing the Olympics would be terrible for Boxing. As popular as the WSoB is becoming, the Olympic games has always acted as the single biggest stage for amateur boxers to display their talents to the world before embarking on a pro career. So many current and Former World Champs have built entire careers out of an Olympic medal, that it's pretty much a rite of passage for young boxers.
This would seriously dent the sport as a whole. Not having the Olympics as a carrot for young boxers would damage grassroots boxing and the appeal of the sport. Amateur's work for years and enter all these international tournaments with the Olympics as the end goal..... funding would be cut as well.... the future talent pool would be cut.
Lets hope this doesn't happen and amateur boxing can sort out this mess.