Amateur Boxing

In amateur boxing (the version of the sport found at the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games) the primary emphasis is on landing scoring punches rather than concern with doing physical damage to one's opponent. Competitors wear protective headgear and box for three to four rounds of two or three minutes each. Each punch that lands on the head or torso is awarded a point. A referee monitors the fight to ensure that competitors use only legal blows (a belt worn over the torso represents the lower limit of punches - any boxer repeatedly landing 'low blows' is disqualified). Referees also ensure that the boxers don't use holding tactics to prevent the opponent from swinging (if this occurs, the referee separates the opponents and orders them to continue boxing. Repeated holding can result in a boxer being penalised or, ultimately, disqualified).

If a competitor is punched sufficiently hard to have trouble continuing the fight, and the opponent inflicted this condition with only legal blows, the match is over and the competitor still standing is declared the winner by knockout. In amateur boxing, referees will readily step in and award knockouts even if the competitor is only relatively lightly injured. The risk of grievous injury is sufficiently reduced in amateur boxing versus professional boxing that it was only in 2005 that the first female boxer died in a sanctioned amateur match, 34-year old Becky Zerlentes; this took place at a Golden Gloves competition, April 3, 2005.

Amateur Boxing History

The Queensberry Amateur Championships continued from 1867 to 1885, and so, unlike their professional counterparts, amateur boxers did not deviate from using gloves once the Queensberry Rules had been published.

In Britain, the Amateur Boxing Association (A.B.A.) was formed in 1880 when twelve clubs affiliated. It held its first championships the following year. Four weight classes were contested, Featherweight (9 stone), Lightweight (10 stone), Middleweight (11 stone, 4 pounds) and Heavyweight (no limit). By 1902, American boxers were contesting the titles in the A.B.A. Championships, which, therefore, took on an international complexion. By 1924, the A.B.A. had 105 clubs in affiliation.

Boxing first appeared at the Olympic Games in 1904 and, apart from the Games of 1912, has always been part of them. From 1972 through 2004, Cuba and the United States have won the most Gold Medals, 29 for Cuba and 21 for the U.S.

Internationally, amateur boxing spread steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, but when the first international body, the Federation Internationale de Boxe Amateur (International Amateur Boxing Federation) was formed in Paris in 1920, there were only five member nations. In 1946, however, when the International Amateur Boxing Association (A.I.B.A.) was formed in London, twenty-four nations from five continents were represented, and the A.I.B.A. has continued to be the official world federation of amateur boxing ever since. The first World Amateur Boxing Championships were staged in 1974.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, amateur boxing was encouraged in schools, universities and in the armed forces, but the champions, in the main, came from among the urban poor.

Women's boxing first appeared in the Olympic Games at a demonstration bout in 1904. For most of the 20th century, however, it was banned in most nations. Its revival was pioneered by the Swedish Amateur Boxing Association, which sanctioned events for women in 1988. The British Amateur Boxing Association sanctioned its first boxing competition for women in 1997. The first event was to be between two thirteen-year-olds, but one of the boxers withdrew because of hostile media attention. Four weeks later, an event was held between two sixteen-year-olds.

The A.I.B.A. accepted new rules for Women's Boxing at the end of the 20th century and approved the first European Cup for Women in 1999 and the first World Championship for women in 2001. Women's boxing will be an exhibition sport at the 2008 Olympics, and it will become an official Olympic sport at the 2012 Olympics.

Fights at the amateur boxing level were scored by five judges, who gave 20 points to whoever they thought won a round, and 19 to the loser, or 18, depending on knockdowns or point deductions. This form of scoring changed after the 1988 Olympic games in Seoul, when Michael Carbajal and Roy Jones Jr. lost their gold medal fights to South Korean opponents, with the boxing media generally believing that Carbajal and Jones Jr. should have won their bouts. It was later discovered that the judges had been bribed to give South Koreans the gold medals against Carbajal and Jones Jr. Ironically, at the same Games, a South Korean boxer kneeled in the ring for about 90 minutes after being declared loser in a fight he thought he should have won.

As a consequence of all the controversies of the 1988 Olympic boxing competition, a new scoring system was invented for amateur boxing: using a computer, judges must press a button every time they think a boxer landed a punch. When all five judges press the button within a matter of seconds, the punch counts as a "point" for the fighter that landed it. Punches to the head or face of an opponent usually score the most points for a competitor. At any point of the fight in which a fighter is leading by twenty points (or sometimes more), the referee is indicated and the fight is stopped, the leading fighter winning by "mercy", and credited with a knockout.