2016 RIO OLYMPICS: BOXING TRIVIA PART II
By Maloney L. Samaco
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 31 Jul 2016
Cuba won just two golds in the 2012 Summer Games, but has a powerful team led by London Olympics bantamweight bronze medalist and three-time world champion Lazaro Alvarez and three-time lightheavyweight world titlist Julio Cesar la Cruz.
Robeisy Ramirez, the 2012 flyweight gold medalist, was the last of the Cubans to qualify after moving up to bantamweight.
Great Britain entered 12 qualified boxers out of a possible 13, their largest boxing squad in 32 years.
Since becoming the first woman Olympic champion, Nicola Adams has added the world, Commonwealth and European Games flyweight division to her list of gold medal titles.
The top British Olympic medal contenders are super-heavyweight Joe Joyce, bronze medalist at the 2015 World Championships and 2015 European Games gold medalist; and the British 20-year-old boxer Muhammad Ali, namesake of The Greatest, was the gold medalist in the 2016 European Boxing Olympic Qualification Tournament.
Kazakhstan is also sending 12 boxers to Rio. France, Azerbaijan, Russia and Uzbekistan entered 11. Cuba and Morocco has 10. Host Brazil is represented by 9 boxers. While United States, Venezuela and Algeria got 8 fighters.
There are 286 boxers, including 250 men and 36 women, from 74 countries who are qualified to compete in Rio.
The controversial decision was made by the International Boxing Association (AIBA) in June to allow professionals to compete in the Olympics. Only three pros have qualified including Italy's Carmine Tommasone, Cameroon's ex-WBO interim middleweight champion Hassan N'Dam N'jikam and Thailand's 36-year-old former IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng as Olympic professional pioneers.
The "10-points must" scoring system used in professional boxing has been adopted by AIBA and will be used for the first time in the Olympics. It is so-called because the winner of a round must be awarded 10 points, with the losing boxer to be given between six and nine points by the judges depending on how closely fought the round was.
Headguards are no longer worn by male boxers. The cumbersome protective pads were worn on Olympic fighters' heads starting in 1984 because organizers wanted to improve safety, and they've been removed in Rio due to a ruling by the AIBA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that it contributes to greater concussion risk. The female boxers will continue using the headguards in Rio.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Maloney L. Samaco.
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