History of professional boxing if Soviet countries could fight pro?

Very different. There would be less USA champions.

 

Jeez, really? This group very good group I'd say the Klitschkos and Tszyu borderline great, but they all failed in their biggest fights, aside from GGG and Kov, which are laying their path still. Michaelchewski had the potential to be great, but never faced Roy Jones and lost to Julio Cesar Gonzalez. You forgot to mention Bute in your group, since he is Romanian.

 

I'm not hating GGG is the **** and so is Loma, but you're trying to put all these guys on a high pedestal and some do belong with the greats, but their actions will speak for themselves. Loma basically has the greatest amateur record of all time, right? He's basically the point you're trying to make, right? Great amateur, great pedigree, EASTERN EURO, etc bla bla. They don't get any better than Loma, according to you. Look what happened when he faced a pro veteran. He lost. LOST. Prime Vitali vs Old Lewis. LOST. Jirov vs Toney. LOST. Tszyu vs Phillips. LOST. Proska vs Mora, LOST. And the list goes on and on. If there were more east euro fighters in the top 25 Atg list you could see where they really stand. But right now theres only one in the p4p list and thats Wlad, who's in a very weak division for sometime. Of course he's going to dominate, he's lucky he was trained by legendary AMERICAN trainer Manny Steward or he'd be getting ko'd by the likes of Purritty again.

 

Enough of these World Championships results ... the U.S. team was basically dissolved every year after the Olympics. Less than two years after they broke up the teams, they were still mixing and matching people trying to determine who was any good in international competition and who wasn’t.

The communist countries weren't doing that.

Go back to those 1974 World Championships in Havana, Cuba,and look at those Cuban and Soviet teams. They were all loaded with holdovers from ’72 Olympics and guys who would go on to fight in multiple Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is throwing out green teenagers/high school students like Howard Davis Jr., who somehow managed to win Gold against a Soviet Olympian who competed in multiple Olympic Games.

Frankly, I’m surprised the U.S. won more gold than the Soviets in four of the eight Olympics they competed head to head in from 1952 to 1988, considering the U.S. team was basically scrapped every four years and the best Soviet and Cuban talent remained.

Also, consider this for a moment: Teofilo Stevenson was arguably the best heavyweight in all of Cuba in 1974. He was no worse than second best heavyweight in that country in the decade.

Compare that to a country like the U.S. How many heavyweights – amateur and pro – were better than Marvin Stinson in 1974? 50 or 60?

How far down the list of actual American heavyweights actively fighting was Marvin … and, despite all that, Stinson finished SECOND in the '74 World Championships.

If George Foreman (the ’68 Olympic Gold medal winner) ... Earnie Shavers (the ’69 National AAU Champ) ... Ron Lyle (the ’70 National AAU Champ) … or 30ish Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier … and a rising Larry Holmes … never turned pro and were all competing against each other in three-rounders to determine who fought Stevenson at the World Championships … do you think Stevenson might have faced someone tougher than Marvin Stinson?

These Communist countries found a winner and they never let them turn pro. And they kept throwing those #1 fighters out there against kids. And then bragged about their medal totals.

The U.S. has arguably NEVER sent the “very best fighter in the country” to ANY Olympic Games – because we also had pros competing at the same time - while Cuba and the U.S.S.R. routinely sent the very best fighter in their nation.

What if the U.S. never let its fighters turn pro and the U.S. fought in Moscow in the Olympics? Think Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Greg Page, Michael Dokes, Tony Tubbs might’ve made the team instead of James Broad?

Think, in 1980, "a prime" Sugar Ray Leaonard might’ve beat Aldama in the Moscow Olympics (since a young Leonard wiped the floor with Aldama in ’76)?

Think Roy Jones - had he not turned pro - might’ve advanced further in the ’92 Olympics than Raul Marquez?

Think Felix Savon (the best heavyweight in Cuba) would’ve won Gold in ’92 if Evander Holyfield or Riddick Bowe never turned pro and Savon had to fight one or both of them in tournament after tournament in the 90s?

I could go on forever.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

The best heavyweights Cuba and the U.S.S.R. could produce were fighting the equivalent of the 60th best heavyweight the U.S. could produce -- when you consider all the active fighters in the country better than someone like Marvin Stinson in 1974 - and the 60th-best U.S. fighter was winning "half" the time against the best from those Communist nations.

The fact is, before the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. did excel at Olympic boxing.

In the eight head-to-head Olympics before the fall of the Soviet Union - when the best U.S. "amateurs" (not the best fighters, the best amateurs) competed against the best USSR fighters the country could produce - the U.S. won more gold in four of those eight head-to-head competitions.

In the TWO Olympics ('72 and '76) when the very best Cubans fought against the likes Duane Bobick -- the U.S. and Cubans BOTH won six Gold medals.

When you add up ALL the golds the U.S. won in the previous FIVE decades before Cuba won their first medal, I have no idea how you can rate Cuba #1 before the Soviet Union collapsed.

When Cuba was at its best in the 70s, it didn't even win more Gold medals than the U.S. teams it faced.

 

I hate this forum because no one can admit there wrong, they say how they feel and even when people have facts to back them up they just keep arguing and making themselves look stupid

World championship medals are harder to win yet the above poster totally disregards them ,also he isn't counting the medals won by Poland, Yugoslavia , Romania ,Hungary , Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries behind the iron curtain and in the Soviet Union who also sent there own fighters

 

amazing post Dubblechin:good

 

Yes, they were certainly difficult for the U.S. to win when Communist countries sent the best man in their country to compete (many reigning Olympic champs)... and the U.S. was sending the 100th best lightweight in the country, who was also a junior in high school and was just old enough to drive.

But why consider that?

 

Iv news for you mate americas last Olympic team was on average 2 and a half years older than the Cuban team

So this boys against men argument is bs,America did better when they were fighting old men

And barely any boxers during the soviet era actually defended there Olympic titles so that argument is a load of **** too

 

The argument about Cubans/Soviets sending the best they had, as opposed to America simply sending the best amateur holds true though doesnt it?

 

We're talking before the Soviet collapse, not in 2012. Amateur boxing, since the rules changes in 1992, have gradually turned Olympic-style boxing into fencing. You get up 15 "points" and the fight is stopped. It's nonsense. I don't even follow it anymore.

I was an avid follower of amateur boxing before that. In the Soviet era, IT WAS more often than not boys against men. And the Soviet and Cuban teams usually remained in tact until one top fighter knocked off another one internally or if the coaches thought one boxer specifically matched up better with another internationally.

That wasn't the case in the U.S. They spent every bit of four years trying to find some semblance of a competitive team.

In 1980, the U.S. boxing team and coaches died in a plane crash on their way to compete in Poland. Only one boxer on the plane - Lem Steeples - was even expected to make the Olympic team. In the year the Olympics were going to take place, the U.S. hadn't even figured out for sure who were the favorites to make their own team. The fighters on the plane were guys like Carlos Palomino's little brother, Paul.

If the U.S. boxing program was anything like the Soviet Union's program, Palomino's "little brother" wouldn't have been on the plane. Carlos Palomino would've been. Or Ray Leonard would've been.

The Communist countries were competing with their best in the country at the weight. The U.S. clearly wasn't and never did. The best were fighting pros.

 

Then you do realise that they have change the scoring back to a ten pint must system and removed headgear and USA had there worst world championships ever? Jason quigley won a silver and he won more fights than the whole ten man USA team combined

 

That's a dumb argument because the US amateur boxing scene was much bigger than amateur boxing scene in the USSR. In the US, the amateurs were always a stepping stone to the pros and, with pro boxing being very popular, large numbers of people participated in amateur boxing. This resulted in more competition and better selection of the best in the sport. If pro boxing was somehow legal in the USSR, the amateur scene would have been a lot bigger, much more people would have participated in it, and the result would have been better amateur talent.

 

I don't have any idea who Jason Quigley is or what you're talking about. (I just had to do a search to figure it out.)

I'm talking about before the Soviet collapse in 1991 - in the 20th Century - which is what this thread is about. Not what's happening now.

 

It's not an argument, it's the truth. The U.S. has never sent the best fighters from the country to the Olympics. The best fighters have been their pro champs and top contenders.

In the Soviet era, the BEST fighters in the U.S.S.R. - grown men, many pushing 30 - competed their whole careers in those amateur tournaments.

In 1974, Marvin Stinson wasn't the best heavyweight in the United States. I think he'd probably have gotten his head caved in by Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Lyle, Holmes, Shavers, and 50 other guys.

And Stinson did better in the World Championships in 1974 than the best Soviet heavyweight did.

That's just the truth.

 

well if thats the case then how come america has been doing terribly since eastern european countires can no longer send there best boxers too?