Olympic boxing on

I take it the protective equipment and scoring system is dictated by the Olympics rather than any supra national ABA commission?

 

That's easy- you can set up your own Amateur boxing association, with your own rules. Once there is no element of explicit pay or remuneration, its technically amateur.

 

I mean, look at Zelenoff. He's got the belt.

 

Now this I agree with. I watch any ammy boxing available on my TV to watch because it is boxing and I enjoy pretty much any boxing, but the ammy stuff so far has been nothing bar box-bots. Awful stuff.

MTF

 

There was a little Thai fella who was throwing corkscrew uppercuts and wicked body shots, had his man down once and gave him a count too. Basically fought like a pro and won like one too. He's been the rare exception, apart from this Azaeri that MWS says he saw, but that could be bullshit, people shouldn't make up countries like that.:nono:

 

Weird, I missed the Thai guy, who did he beat?

And honestly the Azerbaijani guy looked pretty good, and got straight robbed against a Columbian. He had a good, pro style, compact, picked his shots well, punched with power, went to the body.

 

Look at how contrary your two positions are, Einstein. You think that elite fighters are equally likely to have great amateur boxing backgrounds than those with average or minimal amateur backgrounds.

How many fighters have 'great amateur backgrounds'? 3%? 1%? 5%?

So, out of that pool, we get 1/2 of the elite fighters in pro boxing.

Then, out of the remaining pool of am boxers, we get the other 1/2 of elite fighters in pro boxing.

While Irish stood up for you, he's wrong. You are an idiot. If the sports were so 'very different', the likelihood of this kind of correlation would be nil.

As I've said before, the single best predictor for pro success is am success. Some of the reasons are pretty easy to figure out. Among them:

1. The sports are very similar.
2. The competition level at the highest am levels is very high.
3. The skills and talent required to succeed in am boxing are highly transferrable.

Where some of you get off the tracks is by reading that and thinking that I am saying it is guaranteed that a successful am will be a successful pro.

 

I saw an Indian flyweight( but who looked he came from Thailand or Indonesia ) and he looked good oblitering a kid from Honduras I think. So far, Olympic boxing has been far better than I expected. Mainly because everyone here is ridiculously negative about it. I thought I'd see an amalgamn of slapper, runner and skilless guy who could barely throw a hook. It definitively wasn't the case as a lot of these guy's can plain just fight and are very skilled

 

exactly, while am boxing is obviously different from pro boxing, the fundamentals are still the same and it gives a tremendous base for pro boxing.

 

Well, not really. His position is - 'the sports are now sufficiently different that the cross over between them is around 50% or less'. And considering the fact that they're functionally the exact same sport, in ring, before the influence of the differences in scoring/equipment, they're now 'very different', relative to how similar they should be.

 

The relevant comparison isn't between amateur boxing and not doing amateur boxing, though. It's between how good a launch pad it is, as is, and how good a launch pad it could be without the pillow gloves, headgear and the gay ass pacifist scoring system. In those relative terms it's 'very different' and the size of that difference has negative effects on the pro sport.

 

I don't think this is his position. Is this your position? If so, I'll say why I disagree with it, but I'm not going to waste time if it is nobody's position.

 

That's pretty much my position, yeah. And also that the differences change the pro game for the worse.

Why do you disagree?

 

Amateur boxing doesn't exist to be a minor leagues for the pros. That may be what pro fans want it to be, but that's not what it's about. They aren't looking to get people hurt.

So when you point to glove size and headgear as differences, they aren't differences that distort the goals of the fighters, they just make the same actions accomplish different things:

Pro boxing: Clean punches and hurt
Am boxing: Clean punches with sufficient power to get noticed and counted.

Take away headgear and make the gloves smaller and what is happening in am boxing becomes what is happening in pro boxing. At least, for the most part.

 

Nobody has established what the crossover is between elite ams and top pros. Not all elite ams go pro. What are elite ams--world and olympic champs? Olympians? Medalists at world and olympic events? To me, I would say that an elite am is almost always a guy who has won a world or olympic title. Maybe you could sneak in a guy like Khan because of the silver medal and a later win over a great am like Kindelan.

Once you have that pool of fighters...how many of them actually go pro? It's not fair or relevant to count guys that didn't turn pro because there is no way to determine if they would have succeeded or failed.

So pick elite ams and then look at how they panned out as pros. The correlation will be relevant and considerable. For every Audley, there is a wald pussy-wald pussy-wald pussy-wald pussy-.

In fact, I would say the top pro fighters who weren't elite ams are next going to be very good ams--the medalists and olympians...

and I am also guessing that by the time you get down to top pros who weren't good or great ams, you will be looking at fighters who weren't ams or didn't have enough of an am career to matter, but developed as pros...guys like a lot of the top Mexicans. How they do as pros does not change the analysis because no one is saying that you have to be an elite am to be a top pro.

 

This is not true, since because the goal of the sports (which you actually describe well) is different enough to make the boxing style very different.

First: In amateur boxing running away blatantly keeps the score equal, in pro boxing it counts against you

Second: In amateurs leaning against your opponent so that neither can punch keeps the score equal. In pros it counts against you (akthough it can pay you time)

Third: body punching in amateurs is nearly futile. It shouldn't be according to the rules, but if you look at the fights, shots there rarely score points

Fourth: since in amateurs weak shots are as worthy as heavy ones, there is no point in trying to commit to your punches. Very drastic difference to pros.

Fifth: since fights are shorter, strategy that is based on movement and avoiding exchanges is much more effective in pros.

Sixth: Again, even though it is against the actual rules, in amateurs right crosses score most of the points, which makes fighters concentrate on that, while in pros punching has much more variety

 

I don't want to get drawn into this one too much because it can go round and round, but in my opinion the present amateur set up doesn't offer enough in terms of transferable skills for those who ultimately want to get into the pro-game. Guys like Amir Khan and Audley Harrison can prosper in the amateurs because of their inherent size and height advantage and by using those to score points with a good jab and straight right hands.

Also, flashy, quick hands score more points than heavy power shots because, by dint of probability, the five punch pitty-pat combo will see more 'scoring' shots land than single or double, harder shots that would cause more damage in a pro fight but might only see one (or even no) points awarded.

That is not to say that elite ammy's can't and don't prosper if and when they turn pro, because a lot do, but the amateur fight game certainly masks weaknesses which turn out in the pro ranks (Audley doesn't like fighting much and Khan has a glass jaw/neck) and in my view encourages fighters to throw a million arm punches instead of sitting on hurtful shots.

The bottom line is that they are two totally different sports IMO.

MTF

 

Excellent post

MTF

 

Feebles they are not totally different. The fitness and training regimens and basic tenets of the sport are still the same. Its the mentality and outlook that are markedly different.

 

Not true; they are similar but not the same at all. An amateur trains for three round fights, whilst a pro trains for six/eight/ten/twelve round fights. The training regimes are again similar but not the same. The basic tenets, such as jabbing, hooking, straight punching may be the same but the priority in amateur boxing is hand-speed, reach and flurrying. In the pro-game it is speed, sidewards movement, body and head punching with power. They are subtle but very important differences.

MTF

 

First: Perhaps, but not always. It really depends on the pro judge.

Second: Same response.

Third: Body shots did score in the ams. It was evident when we had the automatic scoring system. It was also evident that they didn't score as often as a very clean head shot would. However, is that really any different than in the pros? I'm not so sure it is. In the pros, a lot of body shots don't seem to get credit. In the pros, a lot of body shots aren't meant to get scoring credit, they are meant to put hurt on guys either right away or to help wear a guy down. I do think the best body shots score in both the ams and the pros. A lot of good body shots are more likely to be scored in the pros over the ams, I think. But, it's hard to know for sure because it's hard to know what is really going on in pro boxing scoring.

Fourth: I disagree strongly. Weak shots rarely score in the pros or in the ams. When they score in the ams, they will also score in the pros. I think your view on this point is one of the most widely held misconceptions in amateur boxing. If weak shots scored, the scores would be more like punchstats.

Fifth: I think you mean amateurs? Either way, being better than your opponent in exchanges in beneficial in both am and pro. It depends on your style and a lot of things, including fight length, as to when and where and how this matters.

Sixth: Nah, all punches that score, score. I guess maybe jabs get less credit in the ams than in the pros, but it depends. See reply to First and Second.

People think they know how pro judging is scored, but based upon how many bad decisions there are in the pros, do they?

 

Ah yes but its merely a matter of scale there.

 

Ugo has a keen mind & is handsome & fine.

 

Third - even if pro judges don't give adequate credit to body punching, over 12 rounds they pay their own dividends in a way they don't over 3 (though still considerably less so than over 15, cest la vie).

Fourth - you're right that 'weak' shots might not score, but once a punch meets the requisite level of 'cleanness' there's no added advantage in it being harder. So fighters have no strategic incentive to really put their weight through punches and you can see the difference over time in the number of fighters coming through who really punch through their target (as Manny Steward constantly tells us). With 8 ounce gloves and no head gear the drawback of that type of scoring might have been mitigated.

 

No mikE, as per usual, you're an idiot. A great pro does not a great amateur make. The point is, you don't have to be a great amateur to be a great pro. And some great amateurs are nothing as pros.

It's fairly mixed and random which elite fighters have good amateur programs or not, which essentially means amateur background is fairly meaningless when it comes to pro fighting. Just too different.

 

You're a fucking genius.

Where did I say you have to be a great amateur to be a great pro? I'll tell you where, nowhere. Where did I say that some great amateurs don't suck as pros? Nowhere. Maybe you're just a fucking idiot because you have the reading comprehension of a piece of shit?

But, no, your 2nd paragraph provides further evidence that you're an idiot because, in addition to having problems with reading comprehension, you also have problems understanding how correlations work and that random doesn't mean what you think it means.

 

Precisely.

My position is, considering they are called the same damn thing, the cross over is unremarkable. They are very different.

If they were that similar, the number of elite fighters with elite amateur backgrounds would be far more than 50%.

 

Yep :bears:

 

Yep, very good points, especially regarding body shots, power, pace, number of rounds. Amateur boxing is a very basic, simplified version of the sport.

 

God you're stupiD, mikE.

But no wonder you like amateur boxing so much mikE, it's all about statistics and punchstats. You don't even have have to watch the fights, it must be almost as satisfying as boxrec :bears: