Amateur Boxing’s Potential Death Knell

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What worked so spectacularly well for the United States in men’s basketball at the 1992 Summer Olympics could prove the death knell -- or something very close to it -- for amateur boxing in the U.S. should a proposal by the sport’s global governing body be fast-tracked for approval in time for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

Officials with the International Boxing Association, in what can only be viewed as a panic move in reaction to shrinking interest and confidence in Olympic boxing, last week went public with the announcement that there have been discussions to open the competition to all -- meaning a welcome mat rolled out to pros. The boxing portion of the quadrennial world sports festival will be held Aug. 6-21.

Such a move crush the dreams of young American fighters who thought they had made the cut following the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in December; and it would almost certainly mean the country that has produced a record 108 boxing medals, 49 of them golds, since the modern Olympics were reintroduced in 1896 would be sending a ragtag squad of second- and third-tier pros to Rio instead of the equivalent of the NBA “Dream Team” that utterly dominated in Barcelona 24 years ago.

If you’re a high-ranking official with USA Boxing -- an organization that would seem to have enough worries as it is -- the idea now being floated by AIBA had to be met with dismay in Colorado Springs, where USA Boxing is headquartered and expectant Olympians are training for the trip of a lifetime they now might not be making.

“Do I think it’s going to happen this year? No,” USA Boxing Executive Director Mike Martino told The Associated Press when asked if pros will displace the squad of amateurs, mostly 19- and 20-year-olds who are currently preparing for the Olympic adventure some have been pointing to since they were children. “Practically speaking, we’re looking at 2020, but it’s something that’s been on our radar screen, something we’ve talked about for the last four years, knowing that AIBA pro boxers were going to be in the Olympics. We’ve talked to the [United States Olympic Committee] about how it impacts the sport, and it’s huge. The ‘Dream Team’ changed basketball in the Olympics forever. This will obviously change boxing forever.”

Yes, but in this case it won’t be for the better, at least not for the U.S. While it is undeniable that the presence of the “Dream Team” -- the greatest assembly ever of basketball talent, with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson among the NBA superstars wearing the red, white and blue -- was met with the sort of frenzy reminiscent of the Beatles touching down in New York in 1964 for their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, the games themselves were like killing a mosquito with a hand grenade. The American juggernaut averaged 117.3 points per game and won by a ridiculous average of 43.8 points, but it wasn’t long before some of America’s basketball multimillionaires began to lose interest in representing their country in international competition. The 2000 Olympic team that competed in Sydney, although it took the gold medal, lost an early-round game to Lithuania, and several top U.S. stars declined invitations to participate in the 2002 FIBA World Championships in Indianapolis, the result being a humiliating sixth-place finish. It has become fairly commonplace for at least a few of America’s best NBA players to sit out the Olympics for a variety of stated reasons.

Bottom line: While the “Dream Team” inspired other countries to attempt to close the once-enormous gap between themselves and the U.S., which they have, it is no longer a given that America will automatically take gold in every Olympics or FIBA World Championships. The inability by the U.S. to maintain perpetual and absolute domination does not sting as much on these shores as it once might have, though, because millions of American kids are still going to gravitate toward hoops like moths to a flame.

Could the same diminishment of American prestige play out in boxing, with more disastrous consequences? It already has, except that the rest of the world no longer is trying to catch up with the America; it already passed it, and prospects for a return to Olympic glory in the ring are going, going and almost gone. Since the mother lode -- nine golds, a silver and a bronze -- was mined at the 1984 Olympics, it has been a curious case of diminishing returns for the United States. It won eight medals (three golds) in Seoul in 1988, three medals (one gold) in Barcelona, six medals (one gold) in Atlanta in 1996, four medals (no golds) in Sydney in 2000, two medals (one gold) in Athens in 2004, one medal (no golds) in Beijing in 2008 and, finally, no medals in London in 2012, with victories in only four bouts.

If it were somehow possible to swiftly put together another “Dream Team” in boxing for Rio, there would be at least some hope that the national embarrassment of London could be put behind us. That was the case in basketball in 1992, when Air Jordan and Friends erased the memory of the 1988 U.S. Olympic team, the last comprised solely of college players, settling for a consolation-prize bronze medal. However, there is as much chance of Floyd Mayweather Jr. coming out of retirement to bid for the gold he was denied in 1996 on a horrible computer-decision loss to Bulgaria’s Serafim Todorov in the semifinals, as there is of him donating his entire fortune to charity and becoming a cloistered monk. For one thing, Mayweather would likely require a nine-figure payday to participate, which is a bit more than the USOC’s $300,000 annual allocation to USA Boxing. For another, why would “Money” -- who so cherishes his undefeated record -- again subject himself to the possibility of being shafted by AIBA officials whose integrity and competence has so frequently been called into question?

The simple fact is that the very existence of Olympic boxing is teetering on the brink. There is speculation, which cannot be dismissed out of hand, that Olympic boxing, unless thoroughly cleansed of the corruption that has soiled its image, will not survive past the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.

Blunt-speaking Teddy Atlas, who served as NBC’s color analyst for the boxing competition at the last four Olympics, said all the tinkering done by AIBA is like putting earrings on a hog or slapping a fresh coat of paint on a dilapidated shack. Atlas -- who, by his choice or NBC’s, is not part of Olympic boxing broadcast team for Rio -- said what he saw in London reinforced his belief that what is broken might be beyond fixing, even if the powers that be were truly committed to an overhaul, which he doubts.

“We started seeing bad decisions,” Atlas said, pointing to what he and broadcast partner Bob Papa witnessed. “I mean really bad decisions. I watched this fighter from Japan knock down a guy from Azerbaijan seven times, and the Azerbaijan guy’s point total kept going up. On one of the knockdowns the referee actually stopped counting and helped him up.”

The scoring system for Rio has been tweaked, but Atlas said cosmetic changes mean nothing if systemic corruption continues to fester. For many years, AIBA was regarded as a sort of fiefdom operated with impunity by Pakistan’s Dr. Anwar Chowdhry, who served as its president for 25 years until he was voted out in 2006. Chowdhry’s successor, Dr. C.K. Wu, of Chinese Taipei, was first seen as a much-needed reformer, but Atlas said his regime looks remarkably similar in some ways to that of his predecessor.

“Chowdhry … my God, he was the worst,” Atlas said. “Then Wu came along, and I can’t see any difference.”

It would be easy to depict USA Boxing as being enveloped in a maelstrom of constant intrigue from which it is powerless to escape. It must not only deal with AIBA but also the United States Olympic Committee, causing the national governing body for Olympic-style boxing to navigate choppy waters both internationally and domestically. However, the hands on the tiller change often, creating the impression that no one is really in charge, or at least not for long.

“They are hypocritical and weak,” Atlas said of USA Boxing’s shifting cast of characters in high places. “They don’t protect fighters.”

How does the prospect of the Olympic boxing being opened to professionals impact the United States? For years, Eastern Bloc countries and Cuba were sending de facto pros to the big show, while America was represented by less-experienced, generally younger fighters. Still, the U.S. more than held its own and frequently dominated, until the most prosperous nation on earth began to fall behind because, of all things, a lack of finances.

There are nations that place a high premium on Olympic success and are willing to pay whatever it takes to achieve it. China, Russia and even Azerbaijan have funneled considerable resources into their Olympic boxing programs that the U.S. cannot begin to match. That disparity, when mixed with allegations of rigged bouts, has increasingly left America on the outside looking in.

When AIBA instituted something called the World Series of Boxing four years ago, participating pros with a specified number of fights retained their Olympic eligibility, with the caveat that such fighters sign contracts tying them to AIBA for three years. While WSB teams representing Russia, Germany, Italy, Cuba and other countries are reasonably well-stocked and appear before large crowds, the American squad in the 12-nation league draws poorly and has had little success in filling its roster with quality fighters.

Pro athletes are no longer an oddity in the Olympics, but there is a marked difference between U.S. basketball and tennis players taking part and elite American boxers, who often fight no more than two or three times a year, accepting similar assignments for short money and the prospect of getting hosed on possibly tainted decisions.

In Colorado Springs, where the U.S. Olympic boxing team has been thrust into limbo until further notice, anxiety will rule until AIBA’s proposal is enacted or not. Here’s hoping that it isn’t.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.