2016 RIO OLYMPICS: HISTORY OF BOXING IN THE SUMMER GAMES PART II
By Maloney L. Samaco
PhilBoxing.com
Tue, 19 Jul 2016
Amateur boxing made its Olympic debut at St. Louis, Mississippi, USA but only Americans participated and won all seven possible gold medals and all other medals silver and bronze. Oliver Kirk, won the gold medal in the bantamweight and featherweight divisions, and became the only boxer in history to win two titles at a single Summer Games.
In the 1908 London Games, Reginald "Snowy" Baker of Australia became the only non-British boxer to grab a medal, winning the silver in the middleweight division. He lost in the final match on points to John Douglas as Baker complained that the referee had been bias. Of course, Baker had a good reason to be suspicious, since the referee was Douglas' father! The multifacited Baker also competed in springboard diving and the 4x200m freestyle relay swimming in London.
Welterweight boxer Bert Schneider was born in Cleveland, Ohio and his family moved to Montreal, Canada when he was 9 years old. Unaware of the slot of boxing in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, Schneider discovered that he had been chosen for the Canadian team when he read the morning newspaper. He would go on to win gold medal.
In 1924 in Paris, the featherweight category featured a title bout by two Americans, Jackie Fields and Joe Salas, who were best of friends back in their Los Angeles homes. Salas looked back, "We had to dress in the same room. When they knocked on the door to call us to the fight, we looked up at each other and started to cry and hugged. Ten minutes later we were beating the hell out of each other." Fields won the final match, and the two remained long-lasting friends.
In 1928, controversial decisions in Amsterdam caused fights among spectators outside the ring. One popular dispute involved 16-year-old American Hyman Miller, who lost a first round preliminary bout in the flyweight division. An angry U.S. boxing team threatened to withdraw all of its boxers from competition, but Major-General Douglas MacArthur, that time the President of the U.S. Olympic Committee, would not allow the withdawal, declaring "Americans never quit."
During the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, American welterweight boxer Edward Flynn won one of two gold medals garnered by the US team. After the Olympics, he turned professional to finance his dental school studies. In one his practices, Flynn commented on his career as a boxer, "I got kind of sick of putting on gloves and hitting some fellow in the face when I've got nothing against him."
South African lightweight fighter Thomas Hamilton-Brown initially lost his first-round bout via split decision in Berlin in 1936. But the decision was later changed in his favor when it was discovered that one of the judges had reversed his scores. But Brown already went on an eating orgy before the switch. Despite his efforts to sweat out the extra pounds for the next fight, he was unable to make the weight limit and was disqualified.
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