Whatever happened to Olympic boxing?

Triathlon Forum
1

I’ve always been a casual boxing fan, although much less so now than in the Ali era of the 70’s (yes, I’m that old!!). Back in the 70’s boxing rivalled track as the most watched Olympic sport. I remember watching Sugar Ray Leonard, Spinks bros and many other later to become great pros winning medals at the Olympics. Olympic boxers who won gold for the US were bigger names than the gold winning track stars. In those days 90% of the boxing golds went either to the USA, Cuba or USSR. In those days it was very much an “us against them free world vs communism” propaganda sport. For the Americans winning an Olympic gold was the first step in becoming a pro and going on to a world championship. It was a huge stepping stone to get a career going in the pros.

Now there is very little boxing coverage and it seems like an almost insignificant sport. Who even knows who wins the medals?

Any thoughts on why boxing has declined so much as an Olympic sport?

2

Please, we are getting huge boxing coverage.

In fact we have a 17 year old fighting for gold on Sunday and he is HUGE news here, tonight at the fight the Rowing and Badminton and god knows who else showed up to support the kid…

He’s a rock start and he wants to fight in Beijing because his brother could be with him.

3

boxing has been on it seems almost everyday. Telemundo has it on, as did NBC today. I think it’s been shown in the US almost everyday they fight.
It doesn’t seem to grab the headlines like it used to though. Boxing needs another Larry Holmes, Sugar Ray and Boom Boom.

4

They have had a ton on in the US on the NBC cable affiliates. 4,5 and six hour blocks during the day.

5

Any thoughts on why boxing has declined so much as an Olympic sport?<<

Because it’s very different from pro boxing (not saying that’s good or bad). And, yet another sport rife with incredulous officiating and scoring.

We are getting decent newspaper coveage here, since Andre Ward is from the Bay Area and they’ve been covering his quest for gold for months now.

clm

6

“we have a 17 year old fighting for gold on Sunday and he is HUGE news here”

I saw him fight on CBC today. He seems very popular everywhere.

I thought the announcer said he was the only British boxer to actually come to the Olympics?? Was this wrong? Boxing has traditionally been quite popular in Britain with some very good boxers, so I’d be surprised if this was so.

7

"Larry Holmes, "

Larry is one of my favs but he didn’t fight in the Olympics. He was beat in the trials by Duane Bobick who then got knocked out by Stevenson from Cuba in the final of the heavyweight division, which was a surprise because Bobick had beaten Stevenson previously in the PanAmerican games. Holmes went on to a world championship but Bobick just didn’t have it as a pro.

I always thought Holmes was an underappreciated HW champ. His problem was that we came in just after Ali retired, and Ali was a tough act to follow from a public popularity point of view. Consequently Holmes never got the recognition he deserved. He had the “best left jab in the business” as they used to say. Unfortunately he was just another boxer who hung around too long past his prime and his glory faded.