Conlan lambasted AIBA after his inexplicable unanimous decision defeat to Vladimir Nikitin, branding the organisation “cheats”, yet the Belfast fighter is just one of many to have suffered at the hands of the judges in Brazil.
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It did not say which bouts were affected.
Meanwhile, AIBA announced yesterday that they had reassigned French executive director Karim Bouzidi to a new role. Those duties will be handled for the tournament’s final four days by Franco Falcinelli, a vice president of the executive board and the president of the European Boxing Confederation.
“AIBA will not shy away from its responsibilities and is fully committed to a zero tolerance policy towards fair play in boxing, always acting in the boxers’ utmost interest”, the AIBA’s statement said. It said that “less than a handful were not at the level expected” but refused to overturn the results of any matches that had already been decided. Nikitin still received the decision in a hard-fought bout, prompting an outraged Conlan to denounce AIBA and Russian Federation as conspirators in corruption.
Michael’s comments sparked more anger and now questions loom as to whether boxing should remain after the 2016 Rio Olympics, considering the lack of deterrence and safeguards implemented by the governing body AIBA, to assure that corruption will be ruled out in the 2020 games in Tokyo.
If you’ve been watching the boxing at this summer’s Olympic games, you may have noticed a few questionable results..
The International Boxing Association (AIBA) confirmed Thursday that Stevenson advanced by walkover.
Michael Conlan tweeted his dismissive response to the Aiba, saying “Wow, this says a lot about Aiba”.
“It’s very, very subjective”, USA coach Billy Walsh said.
Among other contentious bouts were the Russian heavyweight Tishchenko’s heavyweight gold medal bout victory over Kazakhstan’s Vassiliy Levit and the Amercian Gary Antuanne Russell’s loss in his light middleweight quarter-final to Uzbekistan’s Fazliddin Gaibnazarov.
Irish former boxing judge Seamus Kelly made detailed allegations of AIBA corruption in the Guardian earlier this month.
“Before the Games, we got the bad feeling that with an ex-Irish referee, who was part of AIBA, and came out and outed them, that they were going to come down hard on us for him coming out and having his say”.
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The new system involves five judges ringside who all score the fight, with a computer deciding at random which three of the five will count.
