No Cigar for Cuba
24-Aug-08 12:21
Could this be the end of the golden era for Cuban boxing? Having watched James DeGale take the Olympic gold from Cuban Emilio Correa, I predict the end of Cuban’s domination of Olympic boxing.
The Cuban defections from the Athens Olympics have left the usually dominant Cubans with good, but not great boxers, who also seemed to lack experience. This was exemplified by Correa having a nibble on DeGale’s chest, resulting in a two point penatly, which ultimately was the difference in the bout.
I think the defining moment which ended the goled era was when Gamboa had to sell his gold medal to pay for his daughter’s birthday party. It seems Cuba’s authorities are not looking after the boxers as they once did.
It’s interesting to see how well (ahem?!) China did in the boxing, although there were some blatant non-scoring incidents in all the combat sports involving Chinese athletes. Never the less, they’re obviously targetting boxing as a poterntial medal earning sport in the future, and it will be interesting to see if the Chinese manage to hang on to their boxers or will they get snapped up by promoters looking to cash in on the huge Chinese markets.
This brings me on to the quality of the boxing at the Olympics, and it seems, particularly with the demis of the ProAm Cubans that the standard has dropped a little, but this could also be due to the scoring system.
It seemed in most of the bouts that body shots were just not scored, and the focus was purely on head shots, which meant most boxers were just trying to land head shots and not working the body shots to lower the opponents gloves to make it easier to land head shots.
I don’t know if it is technically possible, but should boxing (and other combat sports) be looking at a similar system to fencing, where contact, and the force of the contact, could be monitored to count the points. The fighter could wear a thing membrane in their vest that could interact with their gloves to provide accurate scoring, thereby removing any doubts about predjudice in the scoring.
There has already been cheating in fencing, which now has safeguards in place to eliminate any repeat performance, so similar technology can benfit from this knowledge.
But back to the poor Cubans - will the Bejing bunch be signed up by the promoters? Probably not on their performance this year.
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