On Friday night (July 26) the flame will be lit in Paris for the 33rd Olympic Games. This, the second time in the last 100 years that the ‘City of Light’ will host the modern Games.
It also held them in 1900.
Amongst the plethora of sports (some new), boxing can hold its own. Despite the repeated attempts to demonise it and remove from the Olympic programme, on the excuse of mismanagement and corruption, it has prevailed for this latest edition. Quite simply, many aspects of the sport in today’s modern “pillow” society are deemed unacceptable. Professional boxing does, at times, little to help its own cause.
Olympic exposure of boxing and success is critical to the sport to keep it relevant. It has provided many of the iconic moments and helped define some of the Games held in the last hundred years. Sportsman and personalities have emerged who are unequalled in other sports.
‘The Greatest’, Muhammad Ali, immediately springs to mind. A man who was front stage in the US civil rights movement of the mid/late 1960’s and refused to bow to his inclusion in his countries involvement in Vietnam at the time.
Back in Rome 1960, Ali, (then Cassius Marcellus Clay), won heavyweight gold in the Olympic Games. He was quickly followed in successive Games by Joe Frazier and George Foreman, who later became boxing and sporting legends.
Fast forward to 1972 and Cuban hero Teofilo Stevenson won the first of his three successive Olympic heavyweight golds in Munich. Quickly followed by Montreal success in 1976, when Stevenson was arguably at his peak. The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games by the USA over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan only served to confirm the inevitable third gold medal result. Stevenson was that good !
Other Olympic champions who have become hall-of-fame fighters include ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard (Montreal 1976 light-welterweight champion), ‘Golden Boy’ Oscar De La Hoya (Barcelona 1992 lightweight champion), Vasily Lomachenko (double champion in 2008 & 2012), Lennox Lewis (super-heavyweight champion in Seoul 1988) and Oleksandr Usyk (heavyweight gold in London 2012).
Noted medallists include Floyd Mayweather (bronze in Atlanta 1996), Evander Holyfield (bronze in Los Angeles 1984), Roy Jones Jnr. (controversially only silver in Seoul) and a young Amir Khan (silver in Athens 2004).
The Olympic boxing relationship goes back as far as Lazlo Papp; a Hungarian and the first boxer to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals culminating in Melbourne 1956. Also former professional heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson (middleweight gold in Helsinki 1952), right up to Wladimir Klitschko (super-heavyweight gold in Atlanta 1996) and so on.
Britain’s Anthony Joshua triumphed in London 2012 as a super-heavyweight and, is now potentially a professional three-time world heavyweight champion and soon to possibly take part in the biggest grossing fight in heavyweight history, if, and when, he finally meets Tyson Fury.
The Olympics, though not a guarantee of future success, has provided the grounding for much professional boxing achievement, its personalities, and, in a way on the flip side, been an iconic element of the modern Games. Think of George Foreman waving the US ‘stars and stripes’ in Mexico City 1968 at the height of the civil rights movement and Vietnam War, and, Muhammad Ali memorably lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta 1996.
The threat of its omission from future Games is a concern, but let us cherish the competition over the sixteen days of competition for those coveted Olympic medals.
Team GB take six boxers across both sexes to the Paris Games, including Birmingham’s Commonwealth champion, Delicious Orie, who aims to strike Olympic gold in the super-heavyweight division. We wish them all success.
For us observers, enjoy the show.
The Undisputed 