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It’s all over for history-making professional boxers at Olympics
RIO DE JANEIRO: The controversial move to include professional boxers for the first time in Olympic history lasted all of four days after the remaining pro fighters
RIO DE JANEIRO: The controversial move to include professional boxers for the first time in Olympic history lasted all of four days after the remaining pro fighters suffered a mauling on Tuesday.
Three professionals made it to Rio after the landmark decision in June to allow pros to take part in the Olympics, a move which was met with fury in some quarters and claims it might result in serious injury to amateur fighters.
The International Boxing Association (AIBA) hopes to one day lure the biggest names in boxing to the Olympics — think Team USA in the basketball.
It is all designed to boost the popularity of Olympic boxing, especially in the lucrative market of the United States.
But for Rio, boxing chiefs had to make do with three professionals who even most boxing fans would never have heard of.
For all the talk of injury, it was Amnat Ruenroeng — who spent time in a Thai jail for robbery — who looked in danger of getting hurt as France’s Sofiane Oumiha gave him a pasting in the lightweight class in devastating fashion.
FOCUS ON HEADGUARDS
A victorious Algerian boxer says he fears getting headbutted in his next bout after he sustained a nasty cut in a bloody showdown with an equally wounded Russian on Tuesday.
The angry-looking cuts to lightweights Reda Benbaziz and the vanquished Adlan Abdurashidov will shine a harsh spotlight on a decision by amateur boxing’s governing body to ditch head-guards for men for the first time since the 1984 Games.
And with so many fights crammed into a fortnight, it gives precious little time for those wounds to heal between bouts.
Benbaziz, 22, who won on unanimous points, is back in action in three days in the quarter-finals and fears his Mongolian foe could intentionally target his messed-up right eye, after the two fighters clashed heads on Tuesday.
