Frank Warren
Frank Warren, Britain’s premier and longest-serving boxing promoter, has been building champions in the professional sport for nearly 45 years and was acknowledged for his work across the industry in 2008 with his entrance into the International Hall of Fame.
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Eight Nine... Is Boxing About To Be Counted Out Of The Olympic Games?
By Queensberry Promotions
HUBBARD’S CUPBOARD
By Alan Hubbard
As a long-time boxing fan I am now seriously concerned about the sport’s future in the Olympic Games. If, indeed it has one.
The portents are not good. I believe there is now a groundswell of opinion in the International Olympic Committee (IOC), where there is a substantial anti-boxing brigade, that it is time for it to be counted out despite its impressive Olympic tradition.
Boxing is one of the original six sports created for the Ancient Olympics, along with pentathlon, running, horseback riding, chariot racing and wrestling, and has been in the modern Games since 1904.
But the ancient sport is on the ropes and fighting for its Olympic heritage, facing a possible KO from the next Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 because of concerns by over alleged continuing irregularities within the governing body.
It seems outrageous when you consider the Olympics have produced such fistic idols as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Teofilo Stevenson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya, Nino Benvenuti, Lazlo Papp, Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, Anthony Joshua, Vasyl Lomachenko and, since the successful debut of women’s boxing, Nicola Adams/ Katie Taylor, Mary Kom and Claressa Shields.
Alas, boxing’s removal from the Olympic programme is now a real and present danger.
Some within the IOC would like to see this core sport replaced by a more "modern" or esoteric pursuit as appears to be the current trend, with wall-climbing, surfing and skateboarding among the new activities voted in for Tokyo as appealing to a more youthful element.
Other pastimes like chess, cheerleading, squash and wushu - and even esports - are also pressing their claims for future Games.
The boxing controversy began in 2016, when AIBA was plunged into a series of corruption allegations at the Rio 2016 Summer Games. It was alleged that match-fixing could have factored into several bouts. Some claimed that a network of corrupt officials decided the score on certain fights including that of Irish world bantamweight champion Michael Conlan who was scandalously judged to have been outpointed by a Russian.
Olympic boxing has always been prone to biased judging - but then so have other sports like ice skating and gymnastics where the scoring is also subjective. However what happened in Rio seemed blatant skulduggery rather that simple bias.
In October 2016, AIBA had suspended all 36 officials involved in the Rio Olympics pending an investigation. By early 2017, the special investigation committee had deemed that there had been a lack of “proper procedural norms” and several other issues that likely impacted “in-competition best practice.”
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