Boxing at the 2016 Summer Olympics

What was traditionally known as amateur boxing had been little of the sort for many decades. From the fifties onwards state sponsored amateurism had been a fact of life in the communist bloc. Later an evolution of this system had spread throughout the world so that a majority of the world’s best amateurs were better paid than most professionals.

AIBA abandoned all pretence of amateurism over a period that began before the 2012 Olympics and culminated in the appearance of fully professional fighters at the Rio Games. A semi-professional franchise based team competition, the World Series of Boxing, began in 2010 and was followed in 2014 by the fully professional AIBA Pro Boxing series where a dozen elite boxers in each weight division could fight without losing Olympic eligibility. The qualifying system for Rio reflected these changes and guaranteed a number of places for boxers qualifying via the WSB and APB routes in addition to the World Championships and continental qualifying routes. Finally, less than three months before the games were to start, AIBA announced that the final barrier was to be lowered and all boxers were eligible to compete at the final global Olympic qualifiers regardless of any previous professional experience.

Inside the ring there were more changes too - but with still few female weight divisions, and to the disappointment of proponents of women’s boxing, the 10-3 split in favour of men’s events remained. Once again, the women’s weight classes had gaps between them, so many top fighters had no division available to them.

Gone were head guards for men’s boxing and electronic scoring was abandoned as the switch was made to the “10 point must” system that had been used universally in the professional form of the sport for decades. This was not completely popular with fears that biased or even corrupt decisions would become more possible with this method. Although there were some notable decisions that were widely booed in the arena, the fears of a total debacle appeared, at least on the surface, not to come true.

Uzbekistan topped the medal table with 3 golds among their seven medals, with Cuba, who still refused on principle to send female fighters to the Games, next in line ahead of France. It was an Uzbek, Hasanboy Dusmatov, who won the Val Barker trophy for the outstanding male boxer while the newly instituted female version of the award went to America’s Claressa Shields. Shields was one of three boxers to repeat their Olympic wins from London alongside Robeisy Ramírez of Cuba (albeit in a higher weight category) and Great Britain’s Nicola Adams. The French success at the Games pivoted around an engaged couple, Tony Yoka and Estelle Mossely, whose gold medals in the sport now account for more than a third of France’s Olympic titles in the sport.

In June 2021 McLaren Global Sport Solutions, headed by Canadian professor Richard McLaren, was charged with investigating claims of irregularities in the judging and refereeing during Rio 2016.

The report issued preliminary findings in September 2021. McLaren alleged that a cabal of officials were able to use their power to manipulate the judging system to ensure certain boxers would win.

The report claimed a handpicked team of senior referees and judges used signals at ringside or instructed colleagues on the morning of fights as to who should win. Meanwhile incorruptible officials were driven out of the sport, with a weeding out process during the qualifying competition for Rio.

McLaren said that the corruption went right to the top of AIBA with two senior AIBA officials – Wu Ching-kuo and Karim Bouzidi, then AIBA president and executive director, respectively – being “key actors” in “allowing the manipulation to flourish”.

“In 2010 Azerbaijan gave AIBA a $10m investment loan,” McLaren wrote. “This was followed up by an additional $10m loan from Kazakhstan.” What followed was that the referees and judges felt pressure to call bouts for either the Azeri or Kazak boxers.

“Manipulation stemming from the Azeri loan trickled into the London Games.” Just prior to the Games the BBC carried a story of medals for money. The allegation was that the Azeris had been promised Olympic medals as a condition of the $10m loan referred to above. President CK Wu, always concerned about public perceptions, made an executive order to ensure Azerbaijan did not win any medals.

“The fear for CK Wu was that, if the Azeris had won, it would have proved the documentary’s allegations of corruption correct. Therefore, a reverse manipulation had to take place to ensure they did not win any medals for public perception. The Azeris felt betrayed at the end of London 2012.”