There’s still a haze in the air after the warfare that took place over two weeks in Beijing. Vasyl Lomachenko (pictured above) was perhaps the only soul to come out above it all, because everyone else took a beating. The judges, referees, officials, boxing as a sport, announcers…well, not many of the fighters took beatings. This was hardly the most action packed of tournaments, after all. So with the AIBA under fire from both the outside and within, trying to start up a pro league, and 270+ bouts having happened in the meantime, where to start? The scoring is the obvious place. While other subjective sports don’t allow for statistical comparison, amateur boxing does. Do the statistics say anything at all about whether or not there were issues with the Olympic Games?

OLYMPIC SCORING: THE NUMBERS SAY IT ALL

It seems only natural. Teddy Atlas and Bob Papa spent 3 hours a day going completely insane over it, and it carried over to virtually every boxing forum on the planet. How can it be fixed? What needs to be done? When do we scrap it? There were a lot of questions and not much thought put behind any of them by most in the media.

The fact is that points fighting is the present and foreseeable future of Olympic boxing. It all came about after the Seoul Games of 1988 where Roy Jones Jr…..well, you should know the story by now if you’re reading this. Anyhow, the IOC demanded a fully transparent system be put into place, and thus you have what we have now. It cannot be overhauled or changed in vast fashions without boxing being eliminated from the Olympics, which even as bad as this year’s event was most of the time, would be crushing to its worldwide appeal. What that transparency does, however, give us is the ability to compare with prior numbers at other amateur events and see how the scoring differs.

Now, there’s only so many ways I as a writer and researcher can do this in a given time frame, but what you’ll see presented here are a set of figures that I think do enough to prove that the scoring issues at the Games are oddly disconnected from the rest of amateur boxing, and that should raise some eyebrows around the boxing world. Its a shame that so many of the top writers in boxing have ignored amateur boxing over the last decade in spite of increased visibility (The US Golden Gloves, World Championships, and the Pan Am Games were all televised in 2007), but there’s not much I can do about that other than do what I personally can to correct the problem.

To start, let’s look at the figures from the 2008 Olympics. What I’ve done is compliled the points totals of all bouts were not decided either by stoppage or walk over and averaged out what each of those bouts points totals were. Shown here are 6 weight classes chosen at random. These have been rounded to the nearest hundreth. I also decided to do the figures for the round of 32 on at the World Championships of 2007 as a comparison in those same 6 weight classes. You’ll see those figures in bold next to the Olympic numbers. The percentage you see at the end of all this is the percentage up or down the scoring at the olympics was on average versus that of the World Championships. Finally, the numbers on the far left represent the weight limit in KG for each weight class.

51 -  10.75:4.17 | 21.42:10.58 (-56%)

54 -  12.24:4.83 | 23.84:12.6  (-55%)

57 -  11.12:5.16 | 21.58:11 (-49%)

69 -  12.37:5.07 | 22.81:10.85 (-50%)

81 -  9.82:3.64|18:9.17 (-53%)

91+- 10.3-2.89 | 20.8:10.2 (-62%)

Those are massive declines. More than half in virtually all cases, and across the board. How did that happen? The fighters are the same. The judges are generally the same. The criteria is the same. Were the World Championships an outlier? Going back to international competition, let’s compare the two largest fields in the first set of Asian olympic qualifiers, held this year, to the Olympic results.

51 - 10.75:4.17 | 20.43:8.86 (-51%)

54 - 12.24:4.83 | 23.36:9.82 (-49%)

Or what about the first European Qualifier?

69 -  12.37:5.07 | 16.1:7.35 (-27%)

81 -  9.82:3.64 | 23.38:10.31 (-63%)

91+- 10.3-2.89 | 19:9.3 (-57%)

While we get under margin of a 30% drop, something still totally unacceptable, its followed by two drops in scoring well over half. Looking at the number of fights ended by ref stoppage, retirement, or walkover shows a similar tale. At the World Championships, 6 of 31 bouts at the 54 and 57KG in the Round of 32 did not see the final bell, a ratio of 19%. At the Olympics, 25 of 26 went the distance at 54KG, and 25 of 27 at 57KG. One of 28 bouts ended inside the distance at 69KG in Beijing, but in Chicago, it was 5 of 31 (16%). Referee stoppage by outclassment (RSCO) occured once in these Olympics out of all the bouts held. Matvey Korobov won that way twice at the World Championships in both 2005 and 2007. Not a single fighter was stopped on scoring (RSCOS).

In fact, looking at amateur tournaments throughout 2006, 2007, and 2008, it is obvious that there are fewer points being scored. In Yuri Gamboa’s first bout at the 2004 Olympics, he scored 46 points. At the 2008 Olympics, no one eclipsed the 25 mark. Again: There are no changes in criteria and many of the fighters are the same. There have been no notices to demand lower scoring in the amateur boxing community. There is, thus, no reasonable excuse for scores to have fallen 50-60%. One has to assume, given the massive nose dive in scoring, that at best equipment malfunction, and at worst deep rooted corruption, are responsible for the scoring issues at the Olympics.

WORLD LEAGUE OF BOXING?

Dr. Wu of the AIBA sure knows when to pick his spots. He announced the formation of a pro league that will be overseen by the AIBA. Soon you can buy a franchise with your own fighters and compete in professional boxing, team style, as some countries already do with amateur boxing clubs. What is so interesting about the decision is the timing (a massive crisis in scoring, resulting claims of corruption by AIBA Vice President Rudel Obreja) and the fact that an organization long disinterested in the pro game is now ready to jump in. Additionally, Dr. Wu feels that he can get the Cubans to offer up a team, which would be a major coup for everyone involved should it happen.

While it holds little interest in the US, the concept could be a winner elsewhere in the world where professional boxing programs struggle and could use seasoning against other developmental fighters. Its also quite rare to see a sanctioning body such as the AIBA decide to throw itself from the amateur ranks to the pro ranks. Its a bit like seeing the NCAA decide to start its own developmental basketball and football leagues.

AMERICA’S (DYSFUNCTIONAL) TEAM

It was by far the worst performance for Team USA in the history of the sport. A single bronze came home, giving the US the same medal count as such non-powerhouses as Mauritius and India. So much has been said about the team and how it performed and what should be fixed without daring to approach the obvious.

The biggest problem in American amateur boxing is the money, or lack thereof. During the broadcast of the 2008 Olympics, it was mentioned numerous times that Manus Boonjumnong of Thailand recieved nearly $600,000 for his Athens Gold Medal from the Thai Olympic Committee. The US offers any athlete a piddling $25,000 for the sake of comparison. Boxers thus make the same for gold as do trap shooters or archers or sprinters. These are people who do not get hit in the face and yet still take home the same spoils as the next guy. One big incentive was that fighters would recieve major bonuses for winning a gold and turning pro. That’s true in Europe. Lomachenko will probably get a 7 figure signing bonus when he turns pro, which seems inevitable at this stage.

Americans are a different story. Andre Ward’s gold medal in 2004 got him a $500,000 bonus and 4 years of obscurity. Andre Dirrell, a bronze medalist, didn’t come close to that kind of a bonus and while his pro career has perhaps been better managed, he’s still not been given a world title fight and seems somewhat far from one at the moment. The reasons for the change in attitude can go back to January 27th, 2001, when HBO decided to run a “Night Of The Olympians” card on TV. Jermain Taylor (who would eventually become an HBO contract fighter), Michael Bennett, Jose Navarro, Clarence Vinson, and Ricardo Williams Jr. all fought on that card, and Ricardo Williams, the Silver medalist, was thought to be a sure thing. Taylor was the only man to fight on that night and win a title during their career, as Navarro and off-TV fighter Jerson Ravelo settled into tough journeyman status and the others saw their careers fall apart. Williams’ fall from grace was the most abrupt, as he lost focus, lost to lesser competiton, and eventually was arrested and convicted for sale of cocaine.

The collapse of such a top talent was perhaps the largest killer of the 2008 Olympic team. Many top prospects have already chosen to turn pro and attempt runs at titles as the money for medals has dried up. Many of those who did stay, such as Shawn Estrada, were quite clear in the post fight interviews that they weren’t even particularly bothered by not winning anything.

The structure of the team also caused many problems. With fighters coming from a wide geographical area, their personal trainers are thrown out for the national coaches, in this case, Dan Campbell. Campbell had major issues with more than half the team prior to even getting to Beijing, and several fighters (including gold medal favorite Demetrius Andrade) admitted to setting up their gameplans not with Campbell, but on the phone with their personal coaches in the US. Even the Chinese have adopted a multi-coach system, as they used the 2000 Kazakh head coach for some fighters. The US desperately needs to rethink their strategy. Even doing so, its unlikely they will stem the bleeding of talent to the pro ranks.

HOW VALUABLE IS AMATEUR BOXING?

The final point to be made here is regarding an oft repeated meme in the US boxing world. Amateur boxing, its often said, is a poor indicator of professional success and increasingly unimportant in that realm. Statistics don’t lie, though. As poor a show as the Olympics often were this year, the number of elite level fighters without significant amateur careers is extremely low anywhere above featherweight. All of the current heavyweight titlists competed at the Olympics, and two of the three won major amateur tournaments (Klitschko the Olympics, Chagaev a gold at the World Championships). Zsolt Erdei, Antonio Tarver, Andreas Kotelnik, Brahim Asloum, and Joel Casamayor all have won Olympic medals. Many American fighters such as Paulie Malignaggi, Andre Berto, and Steve Cunningham have won National Golden Gloves or National Amateur championships. Kelly Pavlik won the U-19 147lb title as an amateur. Timothy Bradley and Kendall Holt both won several regional amateur titles and were well regarded as young fighters. The best fighters in the world are, in general, still fighters with significant amateur experience, and that will almost assuredly be the case into the future.

And just as the professional game has seen a number of nations become major boxing powers in the last decade in the amateur ranks, their success, in general, goes over into the pros. Of the 16 belts between 168 and heavyweight, merely 2 are held by Americans. Neither man is the consensus champion of his weight division. This would have been unthinkable in the mid 1980s or even early 90s, yet it is a reality right now. And that is perhaps the biggest question coming out of this. If boxing continues to head south in the US, will it even matter? China’s emergence and a decent Indian amateur team represent more than a third of the planet’s population, after all. If America has once and for all allowed its team to deteriorate beyond saving, the newly interested may more than fill the gap.