The Obscene Truth: Gesture sums up Olympic boxing

By Norm Frauenheim-

Roy Jones Jr.’s nightmare continues. He and boxing are subjected to it every four years for the last 28 years. It never changes. Head gear on, head gear off, there’s just no disguise for a mess that began before the Berlin Wall fell.

Jones ranks as the greatest pro of his generation, yet he is remembered more for the 1988 controversy that has defined Olympic boxing ever since the Seoul Games.

The fix that robbed Jones of the gold medal is the reference point for every controversy that happens, ad nauseam and always with no end in sight. It’s beginning to look as if there’s no way back to the day when a Sugar Ray Leonard-led US team in 1976 was an Olympic centerpiece.

Boxing has pushed itself so far to the Olympic fringe that I’m not sure anybody cares anymore. Has anybody heard NBC utter a single mention of anything that has transpired at the Rio de Janeiro boxing venue? Didn’t think so.

In the U.S., Spanish-speaking networks carry the bouts. But the only NBC story about anything resembling a fight involves “whatever’’ happened at a Rio gas station’s bathroom involving security guards and U.S. swimmers, including Ryan Lochte. Gary Hall Jr., a three-time Olympian and 10-time swimming medalist from Phoenix, once said that it’s hard to develop a personality when you spend so much time with your head underwater. He could have been talking about Lochte, the 32-year-old Peter Pan of world-class waters.

I mention Lochte, because swimming’s tsunami of unwanted attention happens as history repeats itself in Olympic boxing. There are the usual judging controversies – this time scored under the pro-style, 10-pound must system. Yet its been mostly ignored by mainstream media, despite a photo of an obscene gesture – an upraised middle finger on each hand– from Irish bantamweight Michael Conlan after losing a quarterfinal decision —29-28 on all three cards – to Russian Vladimir Nikitin.

In perhaps a telling coincidence, Nikitin withdrew from a Thursday bout with emerging American Shakur Stevenson, reportedly because of injuries sustained against Conlan. Predictably, amateur boxing’s ruling acronym, AIBA, announced the familiar shuffles, suspending anonymous judges, unknown referees and faceless bureaucrats.

AIBA said Thursday that executive director Karim Bouzidi of Algeria has been “re-assigned.’’ But to do what from where? It all reminds me of what happened in the aftermath of American Rocky Juarez’ loss to Bekzat Sattarkhanov of Kazakhstan at the 2000 Sydney Games in the featherweight gold-medal match.

Amateur boxing announced that referee Stanislav Kirsanov would be suspended for four years for allowing Sattarkhanov to hold and clinch in the second and third rounds. That prevented Juarez from scoring on the inside, where he was always at his best.

But it looks as if that suspension didn’t last long, if at all. Ringside colleague Bill Dwyre, the former Los Angeles Times sports editor, called Kirsanov while he was still supposed to be under suspension. No, Kirsanov told Dwyre, he was scheduled to work an upcoming international bout and that he had been working for a while.

From Jones to Juarez, from Seoul to Sydney to Rio, nothing really changes. Hate to say it, but Conlan’s gesture says it best.