Professional Crooks in Amateur Boxing

On the eve of the gold medal finals coming up this weekend at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, it all started to fall apart in public for the justifiably beleaguered International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) and their absurd and universally condemned scoring system.

Inside the ring, NBC’s Bob Papa and Teddy Atlas called the scoring during Friday’s semifinals “the worst” so far in this tournament, which began Saturday, August 9, ran though Wednesday, August 20, and resumed Friday, August 22. On Friday afternoon’s CNBC telecast, the last of these daily doses of Olympic boxing on this cable network, video replays of numerous instances of awful scoring were shown.

In a light welterweight semifinal, Manus Boonjumnong of Thailand was shown repeatedly holding Roniel Iglesias of Cuba without being penalized. Boonjumnong won, 10-5. But in the other light welterweight semifinal, Alexis Vastine of France was penalized twice, for a total of four points, for holding against Felix Diaz of the Dominican Republic, who was doing much holding himself. Those four points made the difference of who advanced to the finals and who went home, as Diaz was awarded the victory, 12-10.

The scoring was even erratic and irrational when the fighters of the host country China were involved. In a light flyweight semifinal, the popular returning world champion Zou Shiming was awarded a shutout victory by a score of 15-0 over Ireland’s Paddy Barnes. The NBC video replay, however, clearly showed Barnes landing a clean punch without it being counted, while Zou was the one awarded a point. Barnes did admit that he had legitimately lost the fight, as, like so many boxers at this year’s Olympics, he could not establish a jab and outbox Zou, but the shutout score was preposterous.

In a welterweight semifinal, China’s Silamu Hanati landed numerous solid, effective, and legal body shots against Cuba’s Carlos Banteaux without getting credit for them. Banteaux was awarded the win by an insane 17-4 margin.

Outside the ring, AIBA itself began to become unhinged. A news conference was held by Rudi Obreja of Romania, an AIBA technical delegate to the Olympic Games, charging “AIBA officials improperly manipulated the random assignment of referees and judges to suit particular boxers,” and more.

Obreja singled out AIBA secretary-general Ho Kim, alleging, “Under AIBA rules the names of referees and judges come out of a computer but here in Beijing that rule was broken. Ho Kim, who calls himself secretary-general of this tournament, has changed 60-70% of those names.” He added, “I expect to be expelled from AIBA for what I'm telling you,” which was about the only predictable outcome today.

AIBA responded with a statement alleging that they had uncovered their own conspiracy, saying they had heard two months ago of an attempt to manipulate the officiating, and that they had “also notified the IOC sports department of the issue and the IOC provided an independent observer to overview the competition.” AIBA provided no names, so it was not even clear if they were alleging that Obreja was involved in any wrongdoing.

So apparently both sides agree that there was manipulation, although it is now unclear just who are the real crooks, or what their motives may be.

If all this chaos and corruption sounds familiar to those who follow professional boxing, get ready for the lords of amateur boxing to try their hands at becoming pro boxing promoters. AIBA has just announced they will be forming an organization called the World League of Boxing. According to AIBA president Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, “The World League of Boxing will revolutionise the sport of boxing like never before providing a universal form of entertainment which will capture the imagination of boxing fans around the world.” So he already has the hype part down.

Besides partnering with the marketing company IMG, and promising to set up an actual world league, AIBA’s hook seems to be that they will work with the national amateur boxing federations with the “intention that boxers that compete in the WLB will be allowed to compete also in future Olympic Games.” Rival promoters, of course, need not apply.

According to the boxing page on NBCOlympics.com, the gold medal finals in boxing will be broadcast in the U.S. on NBC and Telemundo (in Spanish) both Saturday and Sunday.

The boxing will be interspersed with other sports both days. Here is the schedule so far, with all times EDT:

Saturday, August 23

NBC -- 10:00a - 4:00p
Women's basketball gold-medal game: USA vs. Australia (LIVE ET/CT). Also, gold-medal finals in individual rhythmic gymnastics, team synchronized swimming, boxing and flatwater canoe/kayak.

Telemundo -- 6:00a - 2:00p
Baseball gold-medal game: South Korea vs. Cuba (LIVE ET/CT). Also, finals in boxing and track and field, and the men's 10m platform diving semifinal.

Sunday, August 24

NBC -- 12:00p - 4:00p
The men's water polo gold-medal game: USA vs. Hungary. Also, rhythmic gymnastics and boxing finals. Medal Event

Telemundo -- 6:00p - 7:00p
Boxing Coverage to be determined.

We know you will be watching, even if the judges aren’t.

NBC Muffs First Day of Olympics Boxing Coverage

What an embarrassingly poor presentation of this year’s Olympic boxing by NBC so far!

The first afternoon telecast on CNBC, which was taped earlier Saturday, August 9, began by showing the same fight, between middleweights Emilio Correa of Cuba and Jarrod Fletcher of Australia, twice, from start to finish.

Although Correa deservedly won easily, he had an eight-count called against him in the fourth and final round when he kneeled to the canvas after a combination to the head by Fletcher, although those punches did not seem to do much damage. Even though they showed this fight twice, and it was pretaped, they never showed a replay of this knockdown.

Announcers Bob Papa and Teddy Atlas did correctly point out that the punches Fletcher landed which caused Correa to kneel down did not even result in one point being tallied by these judges. Generally they did a good job savaging these supposedly reformed Olympic boxing rules. They even had a nice replay of a Chinese boxer getting smashed directly in the face, without a point being scored for his opponent. And they now even have open scoring in Olympic boxing.

The fight they likely skipped involved Russian middleweight Matvey Korobov, a 2005 and 2007 amateur world champion, who outpointed Naim Terbunja of Sweden, 18-6. Korobov is a favorite to win a gold medal this year. Plus, for the American-centric NBC, his parents and older brother reportedly live in Florida, and he plans to turn pro after the Olympics.

The NBCOlympics.com boxing page, with schedules, results, etc., is at http://www.nbcolympics.com/boxing/index.html.

The boxing page on the official Beijing 2008 Olympic Games page is at http://en.beijing2008.cn/sports/boxing/index.shtml.

Most of the boxing in the U.S. will be on CNBC, live at about midnight EDT (more likely with the boxing part of those shows beginning around 1:30 AM EDT) and taped starting at 5 PM EDT most days. The boxing competition runs from August 9-20 and August 22-24, with the finals on August 23 and 24.

Interestingly, although NBCOlympics.com will stream a lot of the action (supposedly only available in the U.S.), there are no plans to stream any boxing – perhaps because they know that so many people in boxing love to brag that they are too lazy or stupid to use the Internet. Of course, this will only encourage more people to seek out these videos online, whether or not the sites offering them are provided by rights holders or by people who just decide to stream them for free.

Here are some links to articles which will help you do that, assuming, of course, that you are not one of boxing’s proud technophobic idiots:

Watch the Olympics Online

How To Watch The Beijing Olympics LIVE On The Web -- Even If NBC Doesn't Want You To

Ready to watch the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

Watch Beijing 2008 live