With the London Olympics opening ceremony kicking off Friday, Alex McClintock has written a couple advance items on the boxing picture already for TQBR, but we’re just getting started: We’ll have coverage of Olympic boxing all throughout the Games, from features on the ladies to some historical look backs and more and more and more, all in conjuction with us being a part of the Guardian, U.K.’s Olympics experts’ network.
But as with pro boxing, there’s always stuff that doesn’t amount to being worthy of a whole danged blog post, so this week we’ll have a regular Quick Jabs to sweep up the pro tidbits AND — right this second — we’ll have an Olympics-focused edition. You can read about who’s doing the television commentary, what Floyd Mayweather said to one of the U.S. team members and who’s looking ahead to turning pro and when and how.
Quick Jabs
Golden Boy Promotions announced this week via news release that it would host the pro debuts of various Olympians and that they would be televised by CBS, which raises a few issues. Generally speaking I like the idea of CBS televising pro boxing, so there’s that. And it would be good to see boxers who compete in the Olympics know they’re going to get a moment in the spotlight afterward for doing so, which could potentially bolster the ailing U.S. amateur system. With the first of two CBS dates coming in October also would be GBP beating Main Events to the punch of pro boxing’s network return, although Main Events arranged their deal first. Another thing, though, which admittedly comes from my place of ignorance: What, exactly, are the rules for Olympic athletes and professional sports? Most athletes are amateurs but there seem to be exceptions, such as for pro basketball players. If this was like the rules governing college basketball players and pros, what Golden Boy would be doing here would seem like tampering. That is, unless somehow Golden Boy doesn’t have anything lined up with any of these boxers yet, and is doing this, basically, on spec. I’d place faith in the GBP legal team if not for them coming out on the wrong end of various legal matters with rival Top Rank…
A couple prominent fighters — in fact, two that Alex mentioned in one of his above-linked pieces — have said different things about their own pro debuts in recent days. Ukrainian lightweight Vasyl Lomachenko is determined to go pro after the Olympics are over, and while I don’t get why he says he doesn’t see any pro boxing in Europe, Europe’s loss is the United States’ gain, because he wants to go pro here. U.K. super heavyweight Anthony Joshua says he won’t for sure turn pro after the Olympics, although that sounds more like the talk of an athlete who doesn’t want to seem to be thinking too much about making top dollar while he’s still an amateur…
I expect Alex will have a ton of scheduling information for us as we go through these Games, but to get us started, here is an extensive U.S. television Olympic boxing schedule, and at the same link you can also stream the individual bouts. The start time for the first Olympic boxing match is Saturday, July 28 at 8:30 a.m…
Once cruiserweight and Showtime commentator Antonio Tarver tested positive for a banned substance following his last fight, his status as a commentator was thrown into doubt, and it would be an especially bad look for him to be a commentator for Olympic boxing given the Olympics’ emphasis on clean athletes. The replacement for Tarver on the NBC broadcast team is B.J. Flores, another cruiserweight who moonlights as a commentator. Flores does a decent enough job; he’s eloquent and sounds like a broadcaster and all, although he does tend to suffer from a common boxing commentator affliction of getting stuck in a storyline and only seeing that one storyline play out in a fight. I’m not saying he’s all that great, but if you insist on having an ex/current boxer on the team, you could do a lot worse, and not much better…
According to multi-Olympic participant Rau’shee Warren (video below), a flyweight that might be the United States’ best hope for gold, current welterweight superstar Floyd Mayweather was contemptuous of him being an Olympian when they spoke. As Warren points out, Mayweather obviously forgets that being an Olympian gave his career a jump-start. Also, for all the “everybody loves Manny Pacquiao, they should love me because I’m an American” b.s. Mayweather was kicking a couple months back, it isn’t very patriotic to shit on a guy representing his country in the Olympics. On the other hand, maybe Mayweather’s “money money money” thing is a purer distillation of the American ethos than literally fighting for America…
Muhammad Ali will attend the aforementioned Olympics opening ceremony. That should get a rise out of people. Ali is, indeed, a symbol of the negative side of boxing, with his current state of health. But he’s an undeniable sporting icon whose mere appearance can stir an audience, as he showed in a more prominent role at the 1996 Olympics…
I’ll have links to some of the best non-TQBR work related to boxing at the Olympics, from time to time. For starters, check out what Matt Mosley has been doing over at Bad Left Hook. It’s encyclopedic.
