CNBC piece on Olympic/Amatuer Boxing

If the NBC pundits put the boot into the amateur game that vigorously well, given the timing, it strikes me as sour grapes. If there were three or four Americans amonst the medals, at the very least they'd be more measured.

National whining aside, there are two different issues at work here. And only one of them is a problem.

1) Amateur boxing is supposed to be scored differently. The fact that aggression and power aren't rewarded isn't a bug, it's a feature. The amateur sport is intended to be about speed, technique, accuracy and defence. It's about connecting with clean punches, on the scoring area, with the proper part of the fist. This is a good thing, if you aren't stuck in a mindset which sees the role of the amateur game as being the pro game with training wheels on. It's a different sport.

Even from the point of view of someone who is primarily interested in the pro game, this is actually a good thing. If you want boxing in the Olympics, if you want boxing to be something that more parents are willing to get their kids involved in, if you want boxing to exist in parts of the world where the pro game is unpopular or even banned, then you should actually want the amateur game to be different from the pro one.

Not the same as the professional sport does not equal broken.

2) On the other hand there are some real problems with the scoring. Three of five judges hitting the button within a second leads to too many punches being missed. What's more, because it's harder to see body shots clearly, a disproportionate number of perfectly good body shots are missed. That isn't supposed to be one of the differences between the pro and amateur codes and it needs to be addressed.

There is also the issue of biased judging. Now this isn't a particular feature of the scoring system. Robberies were actually more common in the past, as Roy Jones Jr would no doubt be able to tell you. Nor is it a particular feature of the amateur sport over the pro one, as anyone who's ever watched a few fights can tell you! Imagine how many dubious decisions we'd see if we watched a few hundred pro four rounders in a row. But it is still a problem. The Chinese boxers have been getting a very easy ride in these games, although the same could be said about Chinese athletes in quite a few sports.

Beyond the Chinese though, I don't think that the judges actually get the winner wrong any more often than they do in the pro game. Complaints about the Cubans are in my view misguided, I certainly haven't seen them get too many wrong decisions. They are just good, despite losing quite a few certain gold medallists before these Olympics, and crucially they box to the system. As do the boxers from most of the former Soviet countries, while those from a lot of other countries tend to box like pros in waiting. Which makes a certain amount of sense, given that they are pros in waiting.

 

Good post, all in all, Marco. I agree with you mostly. Although I will point out that in the US, the criteria we use at almost every local show and what is standard to determine a winner in the event of a tied score at the end of the match is the following judging criteria, in this order: Effective Aggression, Better Defense, Cleaner Style. I think it's the same internationally if they have a tie and then the countback is even too.

 

Yeah, you are right and I think you are right about the international part as well. The thing is though, aggression comes into it only as one of three components of a second tie break. Which is to say, only to a very very limited extent.

Power actually comes into it a bit more, given that if you KO your opponent you win and if you hurt him you are at an advantage. But the basic point remains that the amateur game isn't about power and aggression in the same way that the pro game is. That's a deliberate choice, and the correct one if you want boxing to be any kind of mass or semi-mass participation sport. I love pro boxing, but it is very much not designed to be the kind of thing a moderately athletic person on the street should be training to take part in. People would get killed.

It's a about different visions for the sport.

 

No, you go down the list in that order. You don't factor all of them together; it's like a list-was one of them a more effective aggressor? etc. Yeah, I agree with your last part. Although at the top level of the amateurs in the US, on the domestic level; these guys do hit ****ing hard and don't just worry about speed because in the USA the officials are more willing to score.

 

Really? I didn't know that about the tie break order. So the tie break goes (1) countback (2) aggression (3) defence (4) style? Anyway, it doesn't alter the point that having aggression as a second tie breaker is putting a lot less emphasis on it than the pro game does.

I agree with you as well that the top pros hit hard. Take Kenny Egan, the most technically gifted and classically amateur of the Irish medallists, for instance. His big things are his jab and his defence. I still wouldn't want to get hit by him though!

 

Guys Let me ask you a question??
Why are we stuck with this ridiculous scoring system?
The answer is simple. The judges could not be trusted to render an unbiased decision. Not one judge not two but ALL of them were untrustworthy. This is a worldwide problem not just boxing. It makes you fear for the human race when you cannot get people to be honest and unbiased over amateur sport

 

Yeah, it's pretty sad. It's also because with the computer system they can have a computer tech monitoring what each judge is doing. Oh well. Hopefully the new system is a bit better; I like the clickers we use in the US at local shows and in the Golden Gloves to judge; but those can't be monitored, it's kinda like the old system.

 

"the sport is broken and in complete need of an overhaul"

Translates into "Damn, the US is doing **** poorly. This sucks and the sport sucks. Of course if we had gotten 5 golds and 5 silver, then everything would be peachy and no need for any overhaul".

___________

Haven't we heard that one before? HW sucks - because the best Americans cannot compete.:hat

PS. Yes, there are problems and the scoring system is far too subjective and prone to bias. However, I doubt there is any way to make it really unbiased.

 

On another note, these Olympics are going to have a great impact on the sport in Ireland. The combination of the boxers doing very well (three medallists out of five qualifiers) and the rest of our Olympic team doing very badly has meant that boxing has had a huge amount of media coverage.

It couldn't come at a better time as well. Irish boxing has been going through a really good period in terms of tv coverage. The two main tv stations have started showing the fights of pretty much every good Irish pro live. RTE, the biggest broadcaster, has shown a huge amount of boxing and has had the likes of Andy Lee and Bernard Dunne on as pundits day after day.

There are going to be a lot of kids arriving down to boxing clubs in the near future. And it isn't the pro game that they'll be looking to train for.

 

That's awesome. Ireland has produced some great fighters, I'd love to see them do even better. Maybe Katie Taylor will get some more attention to; she's an awesome boxer; and her brother Pete ain't too bad either.

 

Katie Taylor has actually been on RTE a lot as one of the pundits for the Olympic boxing. That should help raise her profile a bit.

There's also talk of women's boxing making the next Olympics. If that happens, she'll definitely go as one of Ireland's best medal prospects in any sport.

 

Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of talk the women will be in 2012 (finally). Katie really deserves it too. Just a great athlete overall and a really great boxer, great speed and moves on her. That's great that she's been on TV as a pundit over there, she just strikes me as a kind of shy, nice girl. She'll be a heavy favorite at 132 to win Gold. If she's still at 132, that is.

 

It's not all of amateur boxing, its just especially bad this olympics.

 

Like Shannon Briggs said so well

Its not boxing anymore, its fencing without swords.

 

The scoring is bull**** is basically what they said.