Boxing Amateur

As I look back through the decades of amateur boxing history of the BC Golden Gloves from 1939 to 2009, there have been many BC Golden Boys such as two time Golden Boy Dick Findlay and three time BC Junior Golden Boy Cliff Ballendine.  But, neither of them and many more are in any boxing or sports hall of fame.

As I look back through the decades of amateur boxing history of the BC Diamond Belt tournaments in the Fifties and  Sixties in Vancouver  or the revival of the tournament at Victoria in 1980, there have been many Diamond Boys such as Vancouver Firefighters Boxing Club’s  Dave Wylie in 1967 and Victoria’s Gary Robinson in 1980.  But, neither of them and many more are in any boxing or sports hall of fame.

As I look back through the decades of amateur boxing history of the British Columbia amateur boxing clubs, past and present, there are and have been many clubs of distinction that have contributed to the success of Amateur Boxing in British Columbia in a variety of ways.  There was the London Boxing Club of Victoria that hosted a Vancouver Island Amateur Boxing Championship in 1964, hosted club cards that featured the 1964 Olympic Games boxer Fred Desrosiers, and hosted a 1976 BC Selects vs NW England junior boxing tournament that included 1984 Olympic bronze medal winner Dale Walters.  There is the Nanaimo Boxing Club that revived boxing in Nanaimo in 1971 by Dan Wright and Brian Zelley, had the first Canadian senior boxing champion Jack Snaith (1973) since 1967 when Bill Taylor of the London Boxing Club was champion.   There was the  North West Eagles Boxing Club that  hosted many of the BC Bronze Gloves tournaments in the Sixties for junior novice boxers, produced various Canadian champions such as Chris Ius and Les Hamilton under the direction of head coach Elio Ius and coaches Mel Ius and Terry Cooke, and allowed there gym to be used by Muhammed Ali and George Chuvalo, Manuel Gonzalez and Clyde Gray in 1972 before a major pro boxing show.  There have been many other boxing clubs scattered throughout British Columbia but they are not included in any boxing or sports hall of fame.

Throughout the decades there have been many excellent officials and regional amateur boxing commissioners such as Vancouver Island’s Bert Wilkinson (Sixties), Howard Curling (Seventies) and Rick Brought (Eighties) but their  names are not mentioned or listed on any boxing or sports hall of fame.

Over the years, some folks have been inducted into a  Provincial Sports Hall of Fame such as Harold Mann and Bert Lowes (BC) or Eddie Haddad (Manitoba), but there are many deserving individuals, teams and clubs that are worthy of such recognition such as the British Columbia senior boxing team of 1970, but they appear to be forgotten memories of a few.

The British Columbia Amateur Boxing Association (Boxing BC) has the provincial responsibility to ensure the proper organization, education and growth in the sport.  To understand true education should not be to limit the learning to coaches and officials clinics but to educate the members and general public of the history of the sport of amateur boxing in British Columbia.   The establishment of a BC AMATEUR BOXING HALL OF FAME would provide an important public relations opportunity and recognize some of the many past boxers, coaches, officials, and other builders, and members of the sports news media. Buy online ticket with payday advance

Should amateur boxers be concerned about long term brain injury? According to an article published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) the association between amateur boxing and chronic traumatic brain injury is not significant; researchers say it is currently not possible to come to a decisive conclusion.

The authors explain that in the case of professional boxing the risk of long term brain injury is much clearer. However, this does not mean that the safety of amateur boxing should not continue to be questioned.

If the British Medical Association had its way, both professional and amateur boxing would be banned. However, no recent studies have been carried out to evaluate the dangers in amateur boxing. Therefore, Dr Mike Loosemore, Lead Sports Physician, Olympic Medical Institute, Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, UK, and a team of sports doctors and clinical academics looked at the evidence to decide whether the amateur sport might lead to chronic traumatic brain injury.

36 observational studies were identified – all of them focusing on amateur boxing and its potential link to chronic traumatic brain injury. In order to minimize bias, the researchers took into account study design and quality. Their definition of chronic traumatic brain injury included any abnormality in neurological examination, psychometric testing, brain imaging, or electroencephalography.

15 of all the studies came to the conclusion that abnormalities took place. However, the researchers commented that the quality of proof was generally poor.

The studies deemed to be of the best quality – the ones that included psychometric tests – concluded that there were no long-term effects of boxing on the function of the brain. Of 17 better quality studies, just four identified indications of chronic traumatic brain injury in a small proportion of boxers in their studies.

Six of the studies used magnetic resonance imaging. Just one of them found an abnormality – one boxer had a cyst – which could have been congenital. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is normally considered as the best way of determining subtle damage and degenerative change in the brain.

Studies with positive findings were, in general, of bad design and quality.

The authors explain that amateur boxing is becoming more popular. They stress that their aim in this review is neither to support nor oppose the sport. They conclude that the evidence as such is not strong enough to link amateur boxing with chronic traumatic brain injury.

Accompanying Editorial:
Paul McCrory, a neurologist and sports doctor, University of Melbourne, believes that as modern amateur boxers have shorter careers than their peers years ago, and reduced exposure to repetitive head trauma, the chances of this condition developing are fairly slim.

“Amateur boxing and risk of chronic traumatic brain injury: a systematic review of observational studies”
BMJ Online First
“Editorial: Boxing and the risk of chronic brain injury”
BMJ Online First

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• Do you like being a tough guy?
• And do you go to a boxing club to show after that how hard you hit when you’re pissed off?
• Well, you’d better find out that you will become like Muhammad Ali, even if you do not step on a professional arena.

A new Swedish research shows that blows to the head in amateur boxing provoke severe brain damage. “Despite the high prevalence of brain damage as a result of professional boxing, until now there has been little information on the possible risks for brain injury in amateur
boxing,” said study author Dr. Max Hietala, with Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Goteborg.

The researchers employed lumbar puncture to see if there were higher amounts of biochemical markers pointing to brain injury in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 14 amateur boxers. The fighters were checked after a fight and a second time three months after a pause without boxing. 10 healthy men that did not practice box were used for control.

The research team detected in the CSF high amounts of neuronal and glial markers showing brain damage after the fight. Neurofilament light (NFL), a marker for neuronal damage, was four fold higher in boxers in the first 10 days following the fight compared to control subjects.

These high marker amounts turned back to normal only after the three months pause. These abnormal levels following a boxing match were much higher among those amateur fighters who had received over 15 high impact hits to the head.

This category was found to present 7-8 times more NFL-levels post fight than their own levels after the three-months pause. “Repeated hits to the head are potentially damaging to the central nervous system, and our results suggest CSF-analysis could be used for medical counseling of athletes after boxing or head injury,” said Hietala.

When the same analyses were made on soccer players, who head the ball repeatedly from long and high goal kicks, there were no raised levels of brain trauma markers in cerebrospinal fluid. “This data shows headings in soccer is not associated with any neurochemical evidence of brain damage,” said Hietala.

Pierce Egan, the famed 19th-century boxing journalist who coined the term “sweet science,” wrote that “Drummers and boxers, to acquire excellence, must begin young.”

It is as if the fates conspired to push 22-year-old Deontay Wilder toward pugilism just to prove Egan wrong. The 6-foot-7 heavyweight, whose bronze medal on Friday kept alive the U.S. streak of winning a boxing medal in every Olympics in which it competed, never meant to be a boxer. Not like his USA Boxing teammates, all of whom were ducking and diving by age 12.

Wilder grew up as a basketball player in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was in his freshman year playing at Shelton Community College when his girlfriend became pregnant. It wasn’t by design. An early ultrasound showed that Wilder’s daughter would be born with spina bifida.

“Our hearts dropped,” Wilder said. “Doctors gave us the choice to terminate the pregnancy, but after a while I just said, it really doesn’t matter, this is my little girl.”

Wilder dropped out of school and found work at Red Lobster and driving a Budweiser truck so he could support his daughter and shuttle her to doctors and hospitals to fix her clubbed feet. But there was a hole in his heart where basketball had been, and with team sports out of the question, boxing was something that offered a flexible schedule. Thus, 3-year-old Naieya Wilder helped keep the U.S. medal streak alive by turning her daddy to boxing. “She’s healthy and smart,” Wilder said, proudly.

For the first time in 20 years, USA Boxing established a residence program and required Olympic boxers to live in Colorado Springs beginning last September, a response to America’s dearth of boxing gold in recent Olympics after a gilded history. Wilder, with his coach’s blessing, seized the opportunity to “play catch up,” he says, with intensive training.

But other team members resented being plucked from their long-time coaches. David Ali, father of 20-year-old lightweight Sadam Ali, who lost his opening bout, said before the Olympics that Sadam “could have gotten better training [at home in New York]. He has two trainers here.”

Light welterweight Javier Molina, 18, who lost his first fight at the Olympics, said that the residence program “takes me out of my comfort zone. The only thing I like is I get to know the other Olympians, but I don’t know if that’ll help me. This isn’t like a basketball team.” Molina said that while the USA Boxing coaches are very good coaches, Roberto Luna, the man who has coached him since he was eight, “knows my weaknesses.”

It didn’t help that some of the coaches were loath to part with their prized pupils, and many continued to exert influence from afar by email and phone. Wilder’s coach, Jay Deas, bought into the idea that Wilder needed to make up for lost time, and “did not interfere,” says USA Boxing coach Dan Campbell. “Other coaches didn’t want to cooperate.”

In the broader view, though, Egan had a point about experience. This U.S. team was extremely young, with an average age just older than 20, and only one returning Olympian, world champion flyweight Rau’shee Warren, who lost his opening bout.

Wilder could use more amateur bouts to hone his skills, but his punishing power — in a test prior to the Olympics, his jab measured stronger than all but one other U.S. boxer’s power punch — may ensure this is his last Olympics. Wilder said he’s already gotten calls from promoters. In other countries, so-called amateurs enjoy great financial support.

“International boxers, like Cubans, they get paid to stay amateur; we don’t get paid to stay,” said Ali, the first Olympic team member since Riddick Bowe in 1988 to hail from New York City, where boxing gyms have dwindled from a high of 150 in the mid-1980s to 50. “So we go for it once, and turn pro.”

To the detriment of both amateur and professional boxing.

Amateur boxing is practiced at the collegiate level, at the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games, and in many other venues sponsored by amateur boxing associations. Amateur boxing bouts are short in duration and fighters wear head protection, so this type of competition prizes point-scoring (based on number of clean punches landed) rather than physical power. Bouts comprise four rounds of two minutes in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, and four rounds of two minutes in a national ABA (Amateur Boxing Association) bout, each with a one-minute interval between rounds..

Men’s senior bouts changed in format from four, two minute rounds to three, three minute rounds on January 1 2009.
Headgear is mandatory in amateur boxing

Competitors wear protective headgear and gloves with a white strip across the knuckle. A punch is considered a scoring punch only when the boxers connect with the white portion of the gloves. 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 penalized, or ultimately, disqualified). Referees will stop the bout if a boxer is seriously injured, if one boxer is significantly dominating the other or if the score is severely imbalanced.[1] Bouts which end this way may be noted as “RSC” (referee stopped contest) with notations for an outclassed opponent (RSCO), outscored opponent (RSCOS), injury (RCSI) or head injury (RSCH).

History

Amateur boxing emerged as a sport during the mid-late 1800s, partly as a result of the moral controversies surrounding professional prize-fighting. Originally lampooned as an effort by upper and middle-class gentlemen to co-opt a traditionally working class sport, the safer, “scientific” style of boxing found favor in schools, universities and in the armed forces, although the champions still usually came from among the urban poor.

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 the United Kingdom, 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). (A stone is equal to 14 pounds.) 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, Olympic boxing spread steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, but when the first international body, the Federation Internationale de Boxe Olympic (International Olympic 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.[2]

Computer scoring was introduced to the Olympics in 1992. Each of the five judges has a keypad with a red and a blue button. The judges must press a button for which ever corner they feel lands a scoring blow. Three out of the five judges must press the button for the same boxer within a one-second window in order for the point to score. A legal scoring blow is that which is landed cleanly with the white knuckle surface of the glove, within the scoring area (middle of the head, down the sides and between the hips through the belly button, and the boxer can’t be committing a foul (slapping, ducking head, wrestling, holding, etc). As long as the punches land within the scoring area, they are legal and that includes body punches, as well as those to the face. When computer scoring is used, and one opponent is leading by 20 points at any time before the fourth round, the referee is notified and the bout is stopped on an RSCOS – meaning the referee stopped the contest as the opponent was outscored.

Recent developments in sports technology for boxing[3] has introduced systems like the Automated Boxing Scoring System which uses instrumented boxing gear to send information back to a ring-side computer for the purposes of scoring. The system was developed to overcome the shortcomings of the computer scoring system, however the automated system has not been introduced as the official scoring system yet and could take some time to become accepted by boxing officials.

Rules And Regulation (United Kingdom)

Amateur boxing has an age limit that states that you must be at least 11 years of age to have bouts, but there is no training age limit.

Seniors 1. A Boxer becomes a Senior on his 17th birthday. When he reaches his 34th birthday, he will no longer be allowed to box, and his ME3 must be returned to his Association Registrar for cancellation.

Round Duration 2. Boxers will box 3 x 2 minute rounds and males may box 4 x 2 minute rounds or 3 x 3 minute rounds by agreement. Females may box 4 x 2 minute rounds by agreement. In Open Championships and Internationals, males will box 3 x 3 minute rounds and females 4 x 2 minute rounds. In every case there will be an interval of one minute between rounds.

3. A Senior Boxer may participate in a maximum of 18 contests per season excluding Championships and International matches.

Classification 4. There shall be three classes of Senior Boxers. The appropriate classification being: (a) Novice A Novice is a boxer who has not competed in any stage of an Open Senior Championship. A Novice Boxer must not compete against an Open Class Boxer other than in recognised Championship (b) Intermediate An Intermediate is a Boxer who has: (a) entered and competed in an Open Senior Championship but has not won a Regional Association Title, (b) won a Novice Class ‘B’ Title. (c) won a CYP Class C Title. (d) returned from professional boxing. (c) Open

An Open is a Boxer who has: (a) won an ABAE Senior Championship Regional Association Title. (b) boxed at Senior level for his Country. A Regional Association Executive Committee may upgrade a Boxer who in their opinion, is clearly above the prevailing standard for his current level of classification. Similarly, a boxer may be downgraded if his ability, in their opinion is below the standard prevailing in his current classification.

Juniors 1. A boxer is a junior from his 11th birthday (at which age he is eligible to hold an ME3), until his 17th birthday. 2. (a) Boxers under the age of 17 years MUST NOT concede more than 12 months in age, except where necessary for specific International Events. (b) Novice boxers aged 17 years can compete against boxers aged 16 years provided 43 there is no more than 12 months difference in age. (c) It is recommended that Junior boxers do not concede age, weight and experience in a contest. The final decision for any contest is the responsibility of the OIC. Rounds Duration 2. Unless the conditions for Championships or other authorised events prescribe otherwise the duration of bouts for Junior boxers will be as follows: Both boxers aged over 11 years and under 14 years – 3 x 1.5 minute rounds One boxer aged 13 and the other 14 years – 3 x 1.5 minute rounds Both boxers aged 14 years – 3 x 2 minute rounds One boxer aged 14 years and the other 15 years – 3 x 2 minutes rounds Both boxers aged 15 years or over – 3 x 2 minute rounds, or 4 x 2 minutes by agreement. 3 x 3 minute rounds by agreement (Male boxers only)

United States amateur boxing organizations

Amateur boxing can be considered any amateur fight at a local boxing gym, but there are several tournaments that take place to determine amateur champions.

There are several different amateur sanctioning bodies in the United States, including the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) of the United States, the Golden Gloves Association of America, and USA Boxing.

The Golden Gloves is an amateur boxing tournament that is fought at both the national level and the regional level. Although the Golden Gloves typically refers to the National Golden Gloves, it can also refer to the Intercity Golden Gloves, the Chicago Golden Gloves, the New York Golden Gloves, and other regional Golden Gloves tournaments. The winners of the regional tournaments fight in a national competition annually.

USA Boxing also sanctions a national tournament to determine who will compete on the United States National boxing team at the Olympic Games.