Would the Soviet sports machine have taken over boxing had they allowed their Boxers to turn pro?

You are correct. Especially in the 70's,80's and 90's the USA amateur program was very strong and outperformed the Cubans and Soviets. Around the 2000's is when the US program started to falter and we started seeing former Soviet countries like the Ukrane start to really flourish.

 

Correct! Ukraine in particular always were the meat and potatoes of the Soviet program. Kazakhstan produced s9me badasses as well with 96's gold medalist Vassily Jirov coming to mind. Jirov and Tzysu were pretty much the last products from the old Soviet system. Jirov was in that program until Kazakhstan became independent.

 

Were there even any dominant Soviet amateurs back then? If they, who were essentially pros in an amateur format as @mcvey pointed out, couldn't dominate american amateurs, who were just that and rarely older than their late teens/early 20's, why would they dominate pro ones?

 

I'm far too old to pivot .

Oh, I thought it was about how successful Russian amateurs would be had they been allowed to go pro?

 

From 1969 to 1988, the Soviets beat the Americans 18 times in 22 dual mixed-weight meets, and 12 of 14 times in heavyweight competitions. This represents an 82% win rate in mixed-weight competitions and an 86% win rate in heavyweight-specific matches, hardly the record of a team that "couldn't dominate." and from 1974 to 1989, the USSR won 45 medals in World Amateur Boxing Championships so yes they were pretty dominate against American amateurs.

 

It says Soviet or do you think the Soviet Union as only Russia? Little history lesson for you from someone who's family is from the Soviet Union, it encompassed Russia but also republics like Ukraine and Kazakhstan but all of the boxing programs were the same.

 

I don't know about "take over" that seems a bit extreme but it would certainly have greatly changed boxing history. I understand that this is a cop out answer but I personally don't see how someone can be confident either way on this question.

 

To be fair, it's not much different from my asking a long time ago about what would've happened to boxing if there was no WW2, and the force-fed German boxing system churned out its first products.

I believe the answer was that Louis would end up knocking out a lot of Nazis.

 

My family are originally fromGermany [Fathers side]Denmark[ Mothers side,]so I must be an expert on both.

Any Russians/Soviets train any of those guys as pros?

 

Yes Anatoly Lomachenko, who trained Vasyl and Usyk for a bit is a Soviet coach, Usyk current trainer Yuri Tkachenko is a Soviet coach, Bivol's trainer Gennady Gushianov is a Soviet coach, Povetkin found a lot of success when he went to Soviet coach Ivan Kirpa etc

 

I never mentioned Bivol or,Povetkin.

 

I personally think it is different because I don't think Nazi Germany and the USSR are even close to a 1 to 1 comparison. Not politically similar but also more importantly not similar in a boxing sense either. I'm not expert on the matter but there seems to have been way more talent in the USSR than in 1930s Nazi Germany when it comes to boxing. I'm sure there is a bunch of reasons for this which should probably be its own thread. Look at the stats that @themaster458 posted earlier in this thread, assuming these are true do you think Nazi Germany could've pulled off similar numbers? I personally wouldn't be confident in that.

 

Ivan Drago > Hans Gruber, basically.

Maybe if USSr boxers had turned pro, Apollo wouldn’t have had to die.

 

It's been awhile since I've watched the movie but if I remember correctly if Rocky just threw the towel in, Apollo wouldn't have died.