An insidiously brazen affair (AIBA)

Insidious implies secrecy. Not apparently with the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA). Here, everything is open, brazen. Amateur boxing is in the news for all the wrong reasons much akin to professional boxing. A spate of shocking decisions has brought notoriety, and surely these were one of the main talking points of the London Olympics.

In the bantam weight division, Japanese boxer Shatoshi Shimazu lost after hammering his Azerbaijani opponent with six standing counts. The verdict was overturned. Another Azerbaijani boxer Teymur Mamadov won a bout in which he should have been disqualified leaving the opposing Belarusian camp totally mystified. Teddy Atlas, the famous boxing commentator from America, was prompted to remark that ‘You’re destroying this sport and making a joke of it’ and ‘I need a bucket near the ring so I can vomit’. India’s Sumit Sangwan inexplicably lost a first round bout to a Brazilian boxer, and Manoj Kumar too, was apparently the victim of bad judging and lost to a Great Britain boxer. But this is not to impart an anti India spin to this. An Indian boxer Vikas Krishnan clearly appeared to have lost his bout to an American opponent but mysteriously emerged victorious. The decision was overturned on appeal. Cuba’s Cortila was the winner by miles in the super heavy weight against Anthony Joshua of Great Britain but ended up on the losing side. Another Iranian heavy weight boxer was disqualified apparently for no reason whatsoever. A Cuban fighter Juan Luarduet lost a clearly won bout to his Italian opponent and so the list goes on….

So, who’s the Lord of the Rings? Azerbaijan, some would say. The joke doing the Olympic boxing rings is that to win against an Azerbaijani boxer you need a million dollars. In 2011, the BBC in a sting operation, reported that the nation had paid nine million dollars to boxing officials in exchange of guaranteeing at least 2 gold medals at the London Games. But the expose could not prevent the shocking outcomes. These decisions, for and against, affect the broad spectrum of participating nations, and are certainly not restricted to Azerbaijan. The malaise is deeper and so must the probe be. Over here in India, we are familiar with the spectre of match fixing, and if an investigation were to prove this, it would go a long way in explaining the spookiness of these decisions.

Many are blaming the computerized scoring for AIBA’s failure to ensure fair play inside the ring. This scoring requires all 5 judges to score punches in real time, blow by blow, a system that was only revised recently. Clearly the system and the changes made to it have not worked. For one, it needs the judges to react swiftly which may not be feasible every time, and secondly it eliminates the ability of the judges to make an overall round assessment, which could stand the test of a review. In many instances, even when the judges do feel that a particular boxer has prevailed, they are rendered helpless by the live punch scoring.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC )’s hands off policy towards the Associations that govern Olympic sports cuts both ways. Though it gives them a fair degree of autonomy in regulating their affairs, it unfortunately leads to a lack of accountability and responsibility. The IOC needs to act as a watchdog, in the same vein as it led the initiative to found the World Anti Doping Body (WADA), an institution which has had spectacular success. Failure to do so may irreparably damage the Olympic principle of fair play, and may well end up in boxing being axed from the Olympic family.

The AIBA president Dr. Wu has publically acknowledged that major reforms are needed, and in this direction some changes have been made which will be enforced at the Rio Olympics 2016. These include round scoring where the winner gets ten for each round and the loser a relative score, removal of headgear and allowing professionals to compete. The scrapping of the live punch scoring system will certainly lead to more attacking boxing. However, this may not be the solution, as the problem lies not in the rules but in the corruption that has permeated amateur boxing.

What is required is a reduction in the clout of regional federations which impacts the operational running of AIBA, an impartial and transparent process of selection of judges, better training facilities for the referees and perhaps most importantly, a skilled appeals committee that is able to quickly review (within a couple of hours) a decision that is considered suspect. Furthermore, the discretion handed to referees with respect to standing counts and holding fouls etc. needs to be carefully looked into. Till such time then, it will continue to be an insidiously brazen affair ( AIBA ).