Please Don’t Let Pro Boxers Fight In The Olympics
Photo by Gautham Nagesh for StiffJab.com
This week, AIBA shocked the world – or the extremely small part of it that still gives a fuck about amateur boxing – by announcing that professional boxers will be eligible to fight in the 2016 Rio Games. What does this mean, why should we care, and when will Floyd Mayweather Jr. assuage the emptiness in his soul by winning the one piece of gold he lacks?
OK, to put this news in context, you have to know who AIBA is and all the sleazy bullshit they’ve been up to. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with its permissive banking and convenient proximity to war criminals, AIBA is the international governing body for Olympic-style boxing. Think of them as a minor league FIFA, almost as corrupt but not quite ready for prime time.
The acronym stands for the International Association for Amateur Boxing, with the letters in a weird order because of romance languages. A few years ago, they dropped the “Amateur” from their name but left it in the acronym, because they can do whatever they want.
Stay with me. They then launched a “semi-professional” league (which might mean that they pay the boxers occassionally) called the “World Series of Boxing,” and a “professional” league called “AIBA Professional Boxing.” Right before the London Games, they signed several of the competitors to their new professional league.
But, wait, isn’t it a conflict of interest for the organization that runs the Olympics to hold a promotional stake in certain competitors?
Conflict shmonflict! AIBA had by then adopted a new mission statement that practically begged to be followed by demonic laughter: “To Govern the Sport of Boxing Worldwide in all its Forms.”
Before the London Games, the BBC broke a story about Azerbaijan paying millions of dollars to bail out the financially struggling WSB in exchange for two gold medals in London.
Before the Games, AIBA sent a delightfully draconian letter to members of the media (I wish I could find my copy) warning us to shut up already about the whole Azerbaijan thing.
The scoring in London was atrocious (except for the women’s matches, which were not important enough to the thugs to merit buying and selling) but the most farcical outcome came in the Japan vs Azerbaijan bantamweight match, when a barely conscious Azerbaijani fighter was carried through the final round by the ref and then awarded the decision.
This was too blatant even for AIBA, who overturned the decision and dismissed not only that ref but an international technical official. ITOs determine things like which referees and judges are assigned to which bouts, so his dismissal hinted at bottomless depths of skullduggery.
For a while I kept a spreadsheet of all the bad decisions in London but my strength is not in data analysis and I started to feel like that lady from Homeland. Besides, I work with amateur boxers on a daily basis, and if you are coaching kids, you can’t stare into the bottomless depths. You have to believe in the dream.
Shortly after London, AIBA took the protective headgear off the elite male boxers. None of the trainers I respect thought this was a good idea, and the trainers are the ones who love the boxers and want to protect them.*
I should mention that AIBA is currently run by this Chinese businessman named Wu, who never boxed. Although it’s an international organization, America’s influence has waned and tournaments are mostly held in shady places in Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf. Space does not permit a full analysis of Wu’s character, but for convenience’s sake I’ll henceforth call him “Sauron.“
Sauron also changed the scoring from a points-based system that favored the technical, speed-based amateur style to a 10-point must system like the pros that was designed to reward aggression and hard punching.**
Why take off the headgear? Quite simply, for ratings. To make a sport that was fast fading in relevance more charismatic. (It hasn’t worked, though. When was the last time your friend asked you to come over and watch the World Series of Boxing?)
If Sauron had just admitted this, maybe it would be okay. But the truly offensive thing was that he tried to convince the world boxing community that he was taking off the headgear
AIBA hurried to compile spurious research to bolster their claim. Some of the research they cited
actively contradicted it,
but they knew that no boxing people were going to read the shit and be able to make sense of it. And who cares about a bunch of poor kids’ head trauma anyway? Just ask Flint, Michigan.
If you repeat a lie enough times, it takes on its own truth. Soon people at national tournaments were parroting this bullshit to me about how headgear actually gives boxers a false sense of security and increases their chances of concussion.
If that was true, why did AIBA keep headgear on for the youths and women?
Real answer: Because it would freak people out to see women and young people bloody and dazed.
Sauron’s answer: Because women and kids don’t hit as hard, so the headgear does help them. (I can’t tell, but I think this is a Zen koan)
Nobody could debate the fact that headgear protected boxers against cuts, and cuts are a big issue in an amateur tournament. Unlike in the pros, an amateur fighter may need to fight five times in six days. If he wins a fight but is cut, you can try to patch him up and send him back in the next day, but the cut will reopen. It was heartbreaking to watch all the bloody young faces at the first USA Boxing Nationals conducted under these rules.
Sauron still has one final hurdle to scale before we see men box bare-headed in Rio. The International Olympic Committee must approve the rule change.
The IOC meets March 1-3 in Lausanne to make their official decision. Sauron’s release of the news about open professional eligibility at this time is a play for press attention and attempt to force the IOC’s hand. Here’s hoping there are some people in the IOC who know how to read scientific abstracts and have not yet been bribed by Azerbaijan.
PLEASE KEEP THE HEADGEAR ON OUR BOXERS, OH GREAT AND POWERFUL IOC!
The qualification pathway for Rio is already well underway. The United States men’s and women’s team go to Argentina in March to fight at the Continental Confederation Qualifier. After that, our ladies have a second and final chance at the Women’s World Championships in Kazakhstan in May. Possibly female pros could work their way into this tournament through their national federations.
For the men, there is a tournament for the WSB/APB fighters in Bulgaria in May and a final chance for the men in June in – wait for it – Azerbaijan. As I see it, that final tournament would be the only way a male professional who has not had any WSB or APB fights could get into the qualification pathway at this time, but I may be wrong. Sauron can and often does change AIBAs rules as he goes along, so there’s really no telling what could happen.
What does this mean for the Olympic dream of the kids I coach, kids like Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington, Jr., who just got called up as the USA national representative at lightweight?
Shu Shu is 18. I wouldn’t want to see him matched against a man in his thirties with a decade’s experience in the professional ranks. This isn’t tennis or basketball, where the worst thing that happens is you get embarrassed. And Shu Shu is seasoned and well-schooled; some of the competitors from smaller countries or under-funded African programs could get seriously hurt, even killed.
Maybe there won’t be so much of a change, just a few journeymen and low-level prospects skulking around the Olympic village. But maybe this is the beginning of the end of the Olympic boxing dream. Maybe Shu Shu’s younger brother Blake, who is nine years old and coming right along, won’t even get the same chance, because the Olympic boxing tournament will turn into a professional spectacle like tennis or basketball, the same old names on a different day.
That would make me sad. Amateur comes from the word for love, and I loved that my sport – perhaps the most venal of them all, so much that it’s called “prizefighting” – saved the Olympics for the young and the Communists.
Lennox Lewis is on my side, calling the rule change “preposterous,” but Klitschko claims to be interested, as does Tyson Fury. The only good thing about seeing those two fight in Rio is that it would be confined to three rounds.
It’s hard to imagine a professional with a serious career subjecting himself to an amateur tournament where he has no control over matchmaking or judging. Someone like Floyd would seemingly have everything to lose.
The only thing he would stand to gain – the glory of Olympic gold – may have already been lost. Once you put something in the marketplace, it ceases to be priceless.
*Our elite male boxers said they dug fighting without headgear, because headgear is bulky and retains heat, but boxers will like whatever they think they are supposed to like. Motorcyclists like riding bare-headed, too; that doesn’t mean it’s smart. Interesting factoid that I learned when I gave my mom a kidney: people who need cadaverous organs sometimes move to helmetless states because so many more healthy people die there.
**Many applauded this move, as they find the classic amateur style boring. I like that style, but I also kind of like Rigondeaux and the novels of Anthony Powell. More importantly, though, there was a developmental reason for starting kids off with the amateur style. It teaches defense and accuracy, which will keep them safer in the shark tank of professional boxing. Good defensive boxers have long careers.