General

Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes

Aug 22, 2008, 6:50 PM UTC

A Lopsided Scorecard
â†µThe results are in, and the grand total of Olympic medals for the U.S. boxing team is… one, a bronze for heavyweight Deontay Wilder, who lost today in his semi-final match to Italy’s Clemente Russo (two bronze medals are awarded in each Olympic boxing weight-class). â†µâ†µThe medal haul of one bronze officially makes this the worst performance for the U.S. ever at the Olympic Games. The American team last won only one medal at an Olympics at the 1948 London Games, but that medal was a silver.â†µ

â†µâ†µMuch has been written about the comparative disarray that the U.S. boxing team was in coming into these Games. Subsequently, the Americans were criticized for poor sportsmanship when, like many fighters who lost a bout in Beijing, they were not shy about criticizing the woeful judging going on at these Olympics. â†µ

â†µâ†µI’ve already made my feelings known on that score and let me add that I definitely thought both of the American fighters who complained the loudest, Demetrius Andrade and Rau’shee Warren, had legitimate bones to pick with their decisions. But the fact of the matter is that there were no shortages of rob-jobs to go around in Beijing. The scoring at times seemed utterly random. Complaining about a loss was like complaining about losing in computer blackjack. Playing the hand you were dealt was no guarantee of anything over there.â†µ

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â†µLikewise, lambasting the U.S. boxing “debacle” is a pointless exercise. In disarray or not, the team might have won three or four medals in a tournament that was based on boxing merit and not this minor tragedy we’ve seen evolve over the last ten days in Beijing. To my mind we as U.S. fight fans should just be happy for Deontay Wilder and otherwise not draw too many dire conclusions.â†µ

â†µâ†µLong Fall Odds
â†µA lot of big fights are coming up this fall, and yet most of them are posting early long odds in the eyes of the Vegas handicappers. The next big pay-per-view event is the Joel Casamayor/Juan Manuel Marquez fight on September 13th, and Marquez is currently a 3-1 favorite (which, in this amateur handicapper’s eyes, is a bit steep). Shane Mosley is almost 8-1 to beat Ricardo Mayorga on September 27th and Kelly Pavlik is 4-1 to beat Bernard Hopkins on October 18th (again, for this fight fan, Bernard is certainly worth a look at 4-1). â†µ

â†µâ†µOddly, the closest odds of the big fights remaining this year probably would be the as-yet unannounced De La Hoya/Pacquiao fight, where the oddsmakers are on record as saying that De La Hoya would be an early favorite at not quite 2-1. Which is a bit of an insult to the Golden Boy if you think about it, considering that Oscar naturally is about nine weight classes bigger than Pac Man. â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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