Olympics Achievements: should we take it into account when ranking fighters?

Ask anyone that has every won a gold medal how they rate that acomplishment compared to winning a world title in the pro's and I guarantee you it's right up there. Winning five three round fights in that short of a time frame against multiple styles is not easy which is why almost all gold medalist are highly recruited by promotional companies like Top Rank, Golden Boy or in years past Don King.

It's an incredible accomplishment that is sometimes the highlight of a fighter's career.

 

I don't personally take it into consideration, no. It's a great achievement, and it SHOULD mean a gold medal winner in the Olympics would do well as a pro with all the foundational stuff so therefore evident, but as you said, Leon Spinks. Or a better example might be Mark Breland, who knocked them all dead in the amateurs and failed to live up to the hype as a pro. Or Paul Gonzalez. Many others as well. How highly do we rank any of those guys?

Amateur boxing is just a primer for the real thing. To me it's a totally different sport.

 

Basically all you are asking is which boxers are proven to be good at a start of a fight as olympic fights are only three rounds and easy to win, however some fighters don`t suit the amateur system so can be excused.

 

I agree it's a very different sport and requires a much different approach. Like I said, in a lot of cases, a fighters prime is sometimes in the amateurs. Mark Breland was one of the best ever at with a record of 101-1. Leon Spinks was 178-7. That's a lot of fights before ever going pro.

At the end of the day, there are plenty of pro's that had excellent pro careers without much of an amateur background. Holmes and Toney come too mind. And there are plenty of amazing amauter fighters that never did **** in the pro ranks. Those guys are still great fighters.

 

I don't know how to answer that question other than to say a great fighter is a great fighter no matter how they got to that point. I think a guy like Felix Savon is every bit as great as some of the heavyweight champs we have had that didn't have great amateur backgrounds. And vice versa.

 

Conceicao is still a top level fighter in his own right though and my personal favourite at 130. I believe he also should have received the nod over Navarrete, it’s arguable that he should have beat Valdez, and the only guy to have conclusively beaten him - Shakur - did so by low-blowing him into next week and just fighting plain dirty. If anything, Conceicao is an example of why the ammies are a better reflection of the landscape of global boxing than the pros because the corruption seen in the ammies doesn’t even begin to hold a candle to the corruption seen in the pros. All you really need these days to win a title in the pros is a big enough financial backing and some selective matchmaking, but you’d find it harder to win an amateur world championship just by flashing cash and cherrypicking because it’s pretty much impossible to cherrypick in the big amateur events like the world champs or Olympics. Moral of the story is that pro boxing is a hustle where you never know if what you're seeing is what you're seeing.

 

There is supposed to be, and there used to be, a substantial difference between pro and amateur boxing. Now, for the most part, the best pros are just very good amateurs. Amateur boxing is a good place to learn basic things, get over the jitters of being in the ring, then you turn pro and learn how to fight. Amateur boxing is only a means to an end, or should be.
A trainer from Mexico once told me that Mexican boxers don't train to win gold medals, they train to be world champions.

 

My answer to the original question is no, & the reason - in part - it’s rated so highly by the winners is it’s incredibly fortunate to be in a position to fight for it at all, & the fighters know that. An awful lot has to line up for someone to be on an Olympic team - they’re only once every four years, you need money, or connections, or all three, in most cases. The other thing is it comes on the back of kids who’ve achieved very little in life up until that point. Maybe they have a Golden Gloves (maybe) or something else to their name, but not much, if anything. I guarantee you if the Olympic gold became available to a fighter only after they’d won a world championship, a lot of the lustre would be lost.

No, we shouldn’t take gold medals into account when ranking fighters. It’s not a whole lot different, IMO, to someone who aces mathematics in high school or even university, but what career do they go on to achieve? That’s the deciding factor.

 

I agree to an extent. There are levels to amateur boxing. This thread is specifically about Olympic boxing which is levels past learning basic skills at the local level.

Too me, amateur boxing starts at a local level, then regional, then National and finally international. The last two levels you don't get too without being really good.

 

I’d have to disagree. Amateur Boxing is not like a mini-version of the professional sport. It’s wildly, drastically different. Those guys would have to prove themselves in the pros to me, because it’s not just a harder version of the same sport - it borders on a completely different game, as seen by so many amateur stars who fail in the pro ranks. Even the scoring is completely alien to its professional counterpart.

 

You don’t get to them without being really good, I agree…as an amateur.