IT’S said boxing and the Olympics have never been easy bedfellows.
Indeed, Olympic boxing has a long and murky history, littered with brazenness of some judging decisions and bizarre behaviour of some boxing officials and defeated fighters.
The 1988 Seoul Oympics witnessed the most “brazenly bad boxing decision” of modern times when American Roy Jones Jr met South Korea’s Park Si-hun for the light middleweight gold medal.
The talented Jones got into the final with a display of superb boxing, winning all his bouts by unanimous decisions.
Park was less impressive with some pundits even saying he could, possibly, have lost all four of his fights enroute to the final.
The gold medal bout turned out to be a complete rout – Jones scoring 86 punches to Park’s 32. The Korean also took two standing eight counts and was twice warned by the referee.
The count-a-punch recorder scored the rounds 20-3, 30-15 and 36-14 for Jones — a one-sided affair by any measure.
But three of the judges from Uganda, Uruguay and Morocco didn’t think so and awarded Park the decision while the two other judges from the Soviet Union and Hungary voted Jones the overwhelming winner.
As the referee, Aldo Leoni, raised Park’s hand, the Korean fighter was flabbergasted and “entirely embarrassed.”
At the medal ceremony, Jones received thunderous cheers while Park, looking rather sheepish standing on top of the podium, held the American’s fist aloft.
A shell-shocked Jones said later: “I don’t blame Park. He didn’t score the fight.”
Several years later, evidence emerged of bribes being allegedly paid (by the host nation) to “several unnamed judges,” including three from Africa and one from South America.
Apart from the appalling judging in the Roy Jones-Park Si-hun bout, the 1988 Seoul Games also witnessed disgraceful conduct from a boxer and the boxing officials from the host nation.
In an ugly clinch-strewn bantamweight battle between South Korea’s Byun Jong-il and Bulgaria’s Alexander Hristov, the former was twice docked points by the referee, Keith Walker from New Zealand.
The deductions cost Byun the fight and furious Korean officials piled into the ring “aiming kicks and punches” at Walker.
The referee not only fled the arena but also the country almost immediately. After the fight, Byun sat in the ring in protest – for a whole 67 minutes!
Another weird incident took place at the Paris Games in 1924. Britain’s defending middleweight champion Harry Mallin lost a split decision quarter-finals bout to France’s Roger Brousse.
Mallin complained to the referee of bite marks on his chest and shoulder – at least Tyson only went for Holyfield’s ear — and after an appeal, the French fighter was disqualified. Brousse’s first-round opponent had also complained of being bitten.
At the 1960 Games in Rome, the boxing judges were sacked after a series of inept decisions. And at the 1964 Tokyo Games, South Korea’s Choh Dong-kih protested his disqualification by sitting in ring for an hour while Spain’s Valentín Loren “chinned the referee” after he was disqualified.
The Asian Games and boxing are not easy bedfellows either if controversies, sparked by “strange” decisions favouring Korean boxers at Incheon, are anything to go by.
In the women’s semi-final bout, India’s former world champion Sarita Devi was clearly superior but her opponent South Korea’s Park Li-Na was awarded the decision.
Surprised pundits called it “a case of blatant judging bias.” The Indian media went further, describing the judging as “Korean cruelty in the ring all over again.”
The Mongolian and the Philippines boxing chiefs had also blasted the judging, the former threatening to walk out with his contingent and the latter saying bluntly “it’s almost impossible to beat a South Korean.”
Often, it’s not the prospect of defeat in fair fights that bothers good boxers but the scandalously biased judging.
Some boxing decisions are shamelessly biased but the International Boxing Association does the sport no favour by turning a blind eye to the barefaced problem of blatantly partial judging.
As one sports writer points out: “Each time, a controversy erupts, the boxing authorities throw the rule book at the athlete and point to his or her obligation to be sporting. The message seems to be take it in your chin or suffer the consequences.”
Some of the shameful moments in boxing have resulted in the introduction of a new electronic scoring system but this has not prevented biased decisions.
While every effort is being made to catch doping cheats in the competition arena, it’s high time to also catch crooked sports officials, especially boxing judges, who cheat by selling their souls to the highest bidder.