Olympic Boxing is Mired in Muck, So Why Not Turn It Over to a Gymnastics Guy?

Olympic Boxing is Mired in Muck, So Why Not Turn It Over to a Gymnastics Guy?

In 1849, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose,” which translated into English holds that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

It’s a pretty safe bet that Monsieur Jean-Baptiste wasn’t specifically referring to Olympic boxing, but he very well might have had he known of the travails that lie ahead for a sport that was still 55 years away from debuting at the 1904 Olympiad in St. Louis. For a significant chunk of the ensuing 116 years, Olympic boxing has remained the same through decades of malfeasance and deck-chair rearrangement on the doomed Titanic.

On Saturday, Dec. 12, in Lausanne, Switzerland, more vows that reforms will soon be initiated were made by Russia’s Umar Kremlev, upon his election as president of the International Boxing Association (AIBA), ostensibly the governing body for Olympic boxing. Kremlev, who had served as head of the Russian Boxing Federation since 2017, garnered 57% of the vote in a five-candidate field. Due to COVID-19, the “virtual” election included participants representing 155 national federations from five continents.

Even under the best of circumstances, which is definitely not the case, Kremlev is assuming the captaincy of a vessel that, in its own way, is symbolic of the Titanic after it struck that iceberg. For one thing, he is charged with completing the term of interim president Gafur Rakhimov of Uzbekistan, whom American authorities allege is involved with international heroin trafficking (a charge Rakhimov has denied). The embattled Rakhimov resigned just months after being elected two years ago by AIBA members who defied warnings from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that it might not be a good look to turn over its top post to an accused drug kingpin.

And if that weren’t enough to put Kremlev on an instantly uncomfortable hot seat, AIBA is already on probationary status from the IOC, which apparently had had enough of a loose-cannon organization previously led for a combined 32 years by presidents Dr. Anwar Chowdhry, of Pakistan, and Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, of Chinese Tapei, whose soiled tenures hung in the air like toxic smog. Despite rumblings that boxing would be excised from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (postponed until 2021 by the ongoing pandemic), the sport is one of 33 to be staged. But boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics is hardly a certainty; so tenuous is its future that the AIBA is obliged to sit 2021 out because of an IOC ruling that placed Japan’s Morinari Watanabe, president of the International Gymnastic Federation, as the head of an ad-hoc task force overseeing the sport during a quadrennial event at which boxing once was a prominent component.

A gymnastics official in charge of Olympic boxing? The mind boggles, as might be the case had the IOC in its infinite wisdom put George Foreman or Sugar Ray Leonard in charge of overseeing the women’s gymnastics in Tokyo.

“I am the most clean candidate,” the 38-year-old Kremlev said in translated comments at a virtual news conference broadcast from Moscow. “There is no concern about my candidacy and my history.

“Getting rid of AIBA’s debt will be the first priority. My administration will aim to raise $50 million within two years, all of which will be used to rebuild AIBA.” And, presumably, to wrest future control of Olympic boxing from the gymnasts.

Long-time observers of Olympic boxing, the most cynical among them, at least, might be inclined to say that Kremlev’s claim to be the “most clean” candidate is akin to anointing a particular pig as the least filthy in a mud pit. Not only has AIBA been accused of a litany of wrongs that includes the fixing of fights, payoffs sought and received by high-ranking officials and any number of other transgressions that range from the morally dubious to outright criminality, but prior to the 2006 AIBA election in which Chowdhry was ousted, a pro-Chowdhry Russian delegate was said to have brought in outsiders who were members of the “Russian Mafia” to intimidate other delegates into voting for the incumbent. Perhaps it is just coincidence, but one pro-change delegate was found murdered. If that didn’t scare the hell out of the electorate, nothing could.

Dr. Wu nonetheless got 83 votes to 79 for Dr. Chowdhry, but his promises of a new broom that would sweep clean all the ills that had been littering AIBA proved to so much empty rhetoric. So egregious were some of the outcomes of bouts at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics that mere incompetence on the part of referees and officials could not be the only answer to the tsunami of injustices. In the gold-medal heavyweight bout, Kazakhstan’s Vassiliy Levit appeared to be a clear winner over Russia’s No. 1 seed and reigning world champion Evgeny Tischenko, with the decision for Tischenko met with loud booing from spectators.  It did not go unnoticed that IOC president Thomas Bach of Germany was at ringside seated next to Russian president Vladimir Putin, neither of whom appeared distressed by the apparent robbery. Putin, of course, is the person who poured a staggering $51 billion into the staging of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Despite the raft of decisions ranging from debatable to Brink’s Robbery blatancy, AIBA saw fit to issue a statement that read: “With regard to corruption, we would like to strongly restate that unless tangible proof is put forward, not rumors, we will continue to use any means, including legal or disciplinary actions, to protect our sport and its R&J (refereeing and judging) community, whose integrity is constantly put into question. The organization will not be deterred by subjective judgments made by discontented parties.”

Boxing at the Olympics once was the launching pad for such legendary Hall of Famers as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Foreman, Leonard and Oscar De La Hoya, and those are just some of the Americans to mount the top level of the medal stand. It would not only be sad, but unconscionable if similarly talented individuals were shafted at the Olympics by inept or biased judging or, worse, elected to not even try to represent their country because they didn’t believe they would receive a fair shake.

The modern Olympics were first held in Paris in 1896, the brainchild of an aristocratic French educator and historian named Pierre de Coubertin who envisioned them as a means for amateur athletes, not pros, to meet and compete against those of other nationalities. “The essential thing,” de Coubertin wrote, “is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.”

The concept of simon-pure amateurism is long gone, as evidenced by the $7.5 billion NBC Universal shelled out for the exclusive broadcast rights to the six Olympiads from 2022 to 2032. That is a continuation of an association that began in 1992 in Barcelona, Spain, with two other Olympic rights packages totaling $7.88 billion.

With so much money in play, it hardly is a shock that tales of bribes being offered to officials to predetermine certain outcomes, at least those that entail the submission of scores, are now rampant. The task confronting Kremlev is monumental, and recent history does not suggest a rapid or comprehensive turnaround. Put it this way: breakdancing and surfing already have been approved and will debut as Olympic sports in 2024. Whether boxing tags along, with or without AIBA in a position of control, remains to be seen.

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