Concern for boxing in the Olympic Games

[Eff Pandas]

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.

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 .

It would be a travesty to remove one of the original olympic sports.

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.

[!! Shawn]

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?

[!! Shawn]

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.

[Eff Pandas]

You think any of them would be where they are now if they started their careers as unknown club fighters?

The way boxing works now? No. Its who you know, not what you can do in the ring. Or it is til you sign with someone big.

The way boxing should work with iron sharpening iron? Yea most of them all get where they've been & probably quicker (well maybe not Loma) & in more entertaining fashion to fans. And I bet we'd have a whole lot of new names cuz today they are getting left in the dirt for several years & don't progress cuz they didn't sign with big name promoter out of the gate who can get them access to better training/trainers/etc.

You think Andre Ward with his ugly style would have ever gotten any breaks?

He wouldn't need breaks if boxing wasn't so driven to make a guy with a medal or a pretty amateur record or just for being a handsome marketable mfer like Ryan Garcia a draw by cleverly navigating them to a belt vs finding the best guys by putting them in with other top guys.

Ward is surely a guy who'd have made his way to the top on merit without a medal that made him a sexier sell for promoters or TV networks.