What's amazing to me....

[PunchDrunk]

Thats interesting, but really comes to different boxing philosophy. In America, people start boxing with the aim to become professional because they come from lower social classes and dont have another opportunities to make it big. In russia, although going up the ladder of social classed is also a reason, people take up boxing because boxing is considered to be an ''honor'' sport there. Kids from all social classes would take up boxing would be enrolled, many of them not even dreaming to become a prizefighter, for them to win a city or state championship(am) is the biggest achievement. But nonetheless, boxing is on the rise there now, with so many premier fighters being from ex Soviet Union.

I think what you're saying is a remnant of the Soviet days, when they couldn't go pro. It's obviously stuck around for a while as a mentality, but I really think it's changing more and more.

And seriously, Russia alone has 100,000 amateur boxers. Winning the Russian championships is probably harder than winning the european championships. It takes a lot more wins, through regional etc. Think about it. With a talent pool as insanely deep as that, and the amount of money they're willing to spend on talent development (which is a lot), and the organization they have with sports schools, where boxing is integrated into their education (or the other way around, rather), how can they not become a power factor in the future? I could be wrong, but I see a shift in the power balance of boxing that goes way beyond the state of the current HW division.
In fact, I think the reason why it shows up at HW first, is because the talent pool is more shallow there, especially in the US, where most of the really talented big athletes go for football, basketball etc., instead of boxing.

[BrooklynBomber]

I think what you're saying is a remnant of the Soviet days, when they couldn't go pro. It's obviously stuck around for a while as a mentality, but I really think it's changing more and more.

And seriously, Russia alone has 100,000 amateur boxers. Winning the Russian championships is probably harder than winning the european championships. It takes a lot more wins, through regional etc. Think about it. With a talent pool as insanely deep as that, and the amount of money they're willing to spend on talent development (which is a lot), and the organization they have with sports schools, where boxing is integrated into their education (or the other way around, rather), how can they not become a power factor in the future? I could be wrong, but I see a shift in the power balance of boxing that goes way beyond the state of the current HW division.
In fact, I think the reason why it shows up at HW first, is because the talent pool is more shallow there, especially in the US, where most of the really talented big athletes go for football, basketball etc., instead of boxing.

What you are saying is true, in fact when soviet union existed, I think the regional cup was like a week long and consisted of like 6 (am)fights straight(or even more so) and if you win these 6 fights, you could be considered for the Union Cup. Although the Soviet Union is no more, there is still a Federeation cup of a sort where all the am. fighters from ex-soviet union countries meet. There is also a huge number of ''name'' cups, like Kostya Tszyu cup in Russia and Klitschko cup in Ukraine that are apart from the federal program but the winners of it can get sponsorship from the ''names''.