Olympic Boxing
One of the Games' most illustrious sports
Boxing has long been one of the Olympic Games' most colorful and exciting men's sports. When the competition was first introduced in the ancient Olympics, boxers wore long strips of leather wrapped around their fists. The match wasn't considered to be over until somebody either went down or gave up. When the Romans got involved with their form of hand-to-hand combat, they definitely weren't fooling around - the fighters wore gloves that were studded with spikes or weighted with lead. These bouts were usually fought to the death.
Ironically, when the modern-day Olympic Games resumed in 1896, the Athens committee didn't include boxing because the sport was deemed too dangerous. Boxing was welcomed back to the Olympics in 1904 in St. Louis because the sport had become very popular in America. The United States won all the medals that year - it was the only country to enter a boxing team! At the 1912 Olympics in Sweden, boxing was omitted again because that country's national law had banned it. However, by 1920, boxing was in the Olympics to stay.
Though Olympic boxing is a form of amateur boxing, it has its own set of rules. Some of these include:
- 10-ounce boxing gloves are worn.
- The bouts consist of four 2-minute rounds.
- There are five judges who use an electronic scoring system.
- At least three judges have to register the punch for it to count.
- When the boxers exchange a flurry of punches where no solid blows land, the judges wait until the exchange is over and award a point to the boxer who was most effective.
- A boxer can be saved by the bell in the last round only.
- There are three doctors at ringside who all have the authority to stop a bout.
- Boxers must be clean shaven or have only a small moustache.
- Boxers must weigh in every day of the competition.
- The minimum age for Olympic boxing is 17 and the maximum age is 34.
To qualify for the Games, regional qualifying tournaments are held around the world. The number of boxers who make the Games from any region depends on the popularity of boxing in that area and will vary by weight divisions. Once the Games begin, the boxers are paired off at random and compete in a single-elimination tournament. However, unlike in most sports, both boxers who lose in the semi-finals receive bronze medals.
In 1984, head gear was made compulsory, and in 1992, an electronic scoring machine was introduced to make the judges' officiating more objective. There are five judges in Olympic boxing and for a punch to count on the scorecard, it has to be registered within one second by at least three of the judges. The weight divisions in Olympic boxing range from light flyweight (105 pounds or less) to super heavyweight (201 pounds and up).
Olympic boxing is governed by the International Boxing Association (AIBA), which is a Swiss organization that has almost 200 member countries.
Many Olympic boxers go on to become very successful professionals. Some of the all-time greats include:
- Muhammad Ali
- George Foreman
- Joe Frazier
- Sugar Ray Leonard
- Roy Jones Jr.
- Michael Spinks
- Floyd Patterson
- Evander Holyfield
- Oscar De La Hoya
- Lennox Lewis
Some excellent Olympic boxers - such as Cuban super-heavyweights Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon, who both won three straight gold medals - never turned professional because of politics.
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