Has amateur boxing drifted too far away from the professionals?

By Janne Romppainen

05.06 - The surprising news from last night told us that again two Olympic medallists who were considered as top prospects were defeated early in their professional careers. The welterweight up-and-comer Mohamed Abdullaev was knocked out in the tenth round by Emmanuel Clottey, while Clarence Vinson was handed his first pro defeat on points by Heriberto Ruiz in a bantamweight contest. They join the long road of the Olympians of 2000 games who have been struggling in their pro careers.

Medals in the amateur boxing tournaments has never automatically guaranteed success in the pro rings but now it seems that even less top amateurs can compete at the highest level of the professionals. The athletes themselves haven’t become any worse: in fact it seems like many amateurs take their training more seriously than the professionals. The only explanation to the fact that so few amateurs are able to climb to the top of the rankings seems to be that the amateur and professional boxing are two whole different sports today.

Some of the differences have always been there: amateurs use bigger gloves, which means less punching power and fever knockouts. As a result of that, an amateur fighter can be successful even if his chin wasn’t all that good because his punch resistance doesn’t get tested. Also amateur fights are much shorter, for long they lasted three three-minute rounds. In a fight that short fighters’ stamina doesn’t play very big part as it does in championship fights. This is the old news.

But during the nineties the amateur boxing went through some dramatic changes. The most visible one are the “machines” that count the punches landed. Practically it means that there are five judges seated to different sides of the ring. They all have two buttons in front of them, one for each fighter. If they see one fighter landing a punch to the target area, they are supposed to press either the red or the blue button regarding on which corner the fighter is from. If at least three of the five judges react to the punch inside a second, the punch scores a point. The one who has landed more acceptable punches is the winner.

In theory all that sounds reasonable considering that the main thing of boxing has always been to hit and to not get hit. However, it has changed the tactics of the fighters completely. To make an impression to the judges the fighter has to throw punches that everybody can clearly see. Usually it means jabs and right crosses aimed to the opponents head. There is practically no room for body punching, since it is often harder to observe from the audience and thusly it doesn’t score points. Another category that doesn’t really exist anymore in the amateurs are the short hooks thrown from the inside. Again, it is hard to see if they are landing cleanly or not, so it really isn’t profitable to even try them. By just thinking about how important factors both body punching and inside action are in the professional fights it is easy to understand that the rules of these different sports favour totally different types of athletes.

As I wrote earlier, the knockouts have never been as usual in the amateurs as they are in pro rings. However, now it seems that amateur boxing is becoming even softer than before, in fact sometimes it seems even childish. The fights are stopped very easily and a referee can give a fighter a standing eight count if he only takes a snappy jab. One example from the Commonwealth games last summer: a heavyweight semi-final bout was stopped because one of the fighters was bleeding from his nose! In the respect that boxing is still considered a combat sport this seems plain ridiculous. Commonwealth tournament is a big event, for many fighters it is their prime goal of the year, yet they can lose their dream of winning it because of mere bleeding. Now, if no kind of hard punching is allowed in the amateurs, how should somebody expect that the fighters can later withstand the punishment delivered by a top professional?

Why should we care about this then? Why not to let amateur boxing be completely different sport from professionals? Personally I think there are two very good reasons for not to do this. The first of them is the reason why many juniors take up to boxing. Ask any junior fighters what is the biggest dream that they have in their careers. Hardly anybody would say that it is to win the Olympic gold medal. Much more predictable answer would be that they want to become professional world champions. Another example: ask from any boxing fan to name some heavyweight champions from the history. You would probably quickly hear at least half dozen names. Then ask the same fan to name heavyweight boxing Olympic gold medallists outside from them. That would be a much harder task. So clearly the situation seems to be that the amateur career is seen as some kind of a prologue for the big things to come later.

If the amateur career doesn’t prepare a fighter for pro rings, then why should a fighter compete as an amateur at all? The reason to that is that if they don’t get experience elsewhere, the level of professional boxing will come down hard. If there were just beginning fighters fighting each other, it is very probable that the audience wouldn’t want to see them. This of course would be against the preferences of the promoters. This is the second reason why amateur boxing should be retained: to keep up the good level of professionals.

The continuously growing gap between amateurs and professionals is showing more and more. The class of the Olympians in 1996 did well. This is because even though there were already the new rules in amateur boxing, the fighters had learned to fight under the old system. But now there is developing a new generation of amateur fighters who have learned a totally different style of fighting which is unsuitable for the pro rings. The future shows how their shifting from amateurs to pros will work out. Personally I believe they will face major problems.

Comments/question: janneromppainen@hotmail.com