It's been a trend over the past several Olympics where professional players compete for gold. In fact, the majority of professional sports with Olympic counterparts are now open to professionals. Is it time for boxing to follow suit? If it does, do you think most of boxing's stop stars would compete? Imagine Pacquiao competing for the Philippines and Mayweather competing for the USA - they could end up fighting for Olympic gold with no politics separating them. Would seeing top professional talent battle under Olympic rules add to the demand of seeing them fight outside of the Olympics and therefore increase marketability, or would it take away from the demand because people have seen it for free? Should Olympic boxing adopt more professional rules if it opens to professionals? no headgear, no computerized scoring? What do you think?
There should be no pros in teh olympics full stop. Tennis, football, they are talking about golf. Basically it would just turn it into another title and would devalue the achievement. There are already too many titles for the pros.
Amateurs train to give their all over three rounds. Pros train to give their all over 12 rounds.Given the discrepancy between say,an Amateur boxer from Mongolia's training budget and facilities against a professional top 10 in his weight,I think there are too many hurdles for it ever to be a possibility. There's too much risk that doesn't apply to say,Basketball. It would eliminate thousands of young kids whose dream is to compete at the Olympics and deserve to be there.
