Bantamweight (≤54 kilograms), Men

The last two World Championship finals (1989/1991) had matched Cuba’s Enrique Carrion and Bulgaria’s Serafim Todorov, with Carrion winning in 1989 and Todorov in 1991. Todorov was in Barcelona but after Carrion had twice lost to American Sergio Reyes, Jr., who was on the US team in 1992, he was replaced on the Cuban team by former featherweight Joël Casamayor. Another challenger was North Korea’s Li Gwang-Sik, a bronze medalist at the last two Worlds (as a flyweight in 1989).

Reyes was the first of the favorites to go out, losing to Li in the second round, who then took out Todorov in the quarters. But Li lost the semi-final to Ireland’s Wayne McCullough, the 1990 Commonwealth Games flyweight champion, who then faced Casamayor in the final. Casamayor built up a big early lead in the first two rounds and won comfortably.

McCullough turned professional and in 1995 won the WBC bantamweight champion, retiring in 2008 with a career record of 27-7. Casamayor was expected to attempt an Olympic defense in 1996, but a few weeks before the Games started, while training with the Cuban team in Guadalajara, Mexico, he defected to the United States and turned professional. In 2000 he became the first Cuban to win a world professional title when he won the WBA super-featherweight belt. He held that title into 2002 and won various lightweight world championships from 2006-08. Still fighting as a pro at the end of 2011, his career record by then was 38 wins, 6 losses, and 1 draw.