No Cigar for Cuba

No Cigar for Cuba
24-Aug-08 12:21

Could this be the end of the golden era for Cuban boxing? Having watched
James DeGale take the Olympic gold from Cuban Emilio Correa, I predict
the end of Cuban's domination of Olympic boxing.

The Cuban defections from the Athens Olympics have left the usually
dominant Cubans with good, but not great boxers, who also seemed to lack
experience. This was exemplified by Correa having a nibble on DeGale's
chest, resulting in a two point penatly, which ultimately was the
difference in the bout.

I think the defining moment which ended the goled era was when Gamboa
had to sell his gold medal to pay for his daughter's birthday party. It
seems Cuba's authorities are not looking after the boxers as they once did.

It's interesting to see how well (ahem?!) China did in the boxing,
although there were some blatant non-scoring incidents in all the combat
sports involving Chinese athletes. Never the less, they're obviously
targetting boxing as a poterntial medal earning sport in the future, and
it will be interesting to see if the Chinese manage to hang on to their
boxers or will they get snapped up by promoters looking to cash in on
the huge Chinese markets.

This brings me on to the quality of the boxing at the Olympics, and it
seems, particularly with the demis of the ProAm Cubans that the standard
has dropped a little, but this could also be due to the scoring system.

It seemed in most of the bouts that body shots were just not scored, and
the focus was purely on head shots, which meant most boxers were just
trying to land head shots and not working the body shots to lower the
opponents gloves to make it easier to land head shots.

I don't know if it is technically possible, but should boxing (and other
combat sports) be looking at a similar system to fencing, where contact,
and the force of the contact, could be monitored to count the points.
The fighter could wear a thing membrane in their vest that could
interact with their gloves to provide accurate scoring, thereby removing
any doubts about predjudice in the scoring.

There has already been cheating in fencing, which now has safeguards in
place to eliminate any repeat performance, so similar technology can
benfit from this knowledge.

But back to the poor Cubans - will the Bejing bunch be signed up by the
promoters? Probably not on their performance this year.

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