Professional Boxers in the Olympics?
“We want the best boxers to come to the Olympic Games. It is AIBA’s 70th birthday, and we want something to change — not after four years, but now.
It is an IOC policy to have the best athletes in the Games, and of the international federations, AIBA is probably the only one without professional athletes in the Olympics.”
-AIBA president Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu quoted by the Press Association
I am for this change. The Olympics are for The Best Athletes. The Amateur Boxing system in the United States is beyond broken. Boxing is not losing athletes to sports like Football on popularity alone: Amateur Boxing in the United States has become one of the least financially accessible sports for kids to enter.
Amateur boxers, or “Sponsors” of their gyms, must pay every step of the way: for registration, equipment, travel, any medical expenses (including testing), and even entry into competitions. Meanwhile, those same competitions are charging for tickets and televised with advertisers. What about those “Sponsors”? An amateur boxer cannot have a direct sponsor or endorsement, the money can only come from the boxer, their gym, or a sponsor of their gym. So how do gyms get sponsors? In small towns, like my hometown of Eugene Oregon, they generally don’t. In big cities, there are gyms that receive donations from the charitable rich, but you can bet there are plenty of gyms receiving money based solely on the prospective talents within the gym. So much for that rule about individual fighters and endorsements, right?
When Steve Prefontaine and other collegiate athletes fought the AAU it was for similar reasons: amateur track athletes were being forced to support themselves completely, without competition related funds, or be banned from competition. Boxing, a sport of individuals training to beat each other up, has never been good at unionizing… and so the majority of athletes in the sport, both amateur and professional, struggle to train while working unrelated full-time jobs. The millionaire-and-more “Money Mayweather”s of the world are rare.
This is not a new discussion. Even politicians John McCain and Harry Reid tried to help Boxing clean up its act and provide better conditions to the athletes both during and after their careers. All attempts at a grand solution have failed, and the top-down dysfunction of the sport continues to severely limit who can cobble together the means to compete.
I don’t think this is a good idea. After all, the road to the Olympics is for the young. As a teenager, I wanted to represent my country at the Olympics. When I moved to professional boxing, it became my job. Everything comes in good time. Imagine your 19-year-old son gets sent to the Olympic Games, and now he has to fight Wladimir Klitschko. My honest opinion, no [it shouldn’t happen].
-Roy Jones, Jr. as quoted by Yuri Tarantin of Allboxing.ru
I understand Roy Jones’ fears when he says “Imagine your 19-year-old son gets sent to the Olympic games, and now he has to fight Wladimir Klitschko.” but what Roy isn’t explaining is that this has been happening for generations. Cuba does not field professional boxers, in fact, their boxers are never allowed to become professionals. The result is perhaps counter-intuitive: World Class Cuban fighters like Teofilo Stevenson dominated the 19-year-olds of the world every four years. Stevenson, who won Olympic boxing gold three times, was so good that he was pursued for a fight with professional world champion Muhammad Ali!
Maybe if we fix the amateur boxing system in the U.S. we’ll see the next 20-year-old Mike Tyson fight his way to the top and beat a professional world champion for a gold medal. Until then-
The Olympics are where the best face the best.
Further reading:
- Even the professional Olympic athletes financially struggle while training for the Olympic Games — Chavon Sutton for CNN Money
My continued coverage of Professional Boxers in the Olympics:
My coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympics, in which all Professionals lost to Amateurs:
