http://www.boxinginsider.com/more-h...hows-self-at-olympics-after-10-million-bribe/
How does a fighter who’s been knocked down five times in the last round win an Olympic decision? It helps if his country is Azerbaijan, a place where just about anywhere you dig a hole in the ground you come up with petroleum, natural gas, gold, silver, iron, copper, titanium, chromium, manganese, cobalt, molybdenum, and other stuff, some of which I never heard of.
So despite having a human rights record comparable to the dictatorship in Iran, Azerbaijan is one of the Big Men on Campus in the London Olympics, at least as far as boxing is concerned.
Let’s backtrack. A sleazy outfit called the International Boxing Association runs boxing in this Olympics. Its initials are AIBA, which makes about as much sense as designating it the boxing honcho in an honorable Games tradition. Last fall Britain’s BBC, one of the most prestigious media entities in the world, boldly accused the AIBA of accepting $10 million from an equally sleazy “investor” from Azerbaijan in exchange for two gold medals at the London Games. (The sum may have been only $9 million, but let’s accept the rounder figure)
“First of all, no comment,” responded Ivan Khodabakhsh, the association’s chief executive officer. “Secondly, absolutely a lie.” Honest, that’s how he replied to reporter Anna Adams in an on-air interview. Can you imagine? Eventually the crooks conceded that they had, in fact, accepted a “loan” from a Swiss company which “originated from an Azerbaijani investor.” But the AIBA denied any corruption was involved. Uh huh.
So why did the Olympic Games Committee members allow this corrupt band of creeps to remain the official supervisors of boxing at the Olympics? Maybe because it was too late to do anything about it. The athletes were already selected or in the selection process. Olympic officials had bigger fish to fry — women’s gymnastics, soccer, and all the other sports that most of the world cares more about. So the obvious crooks remained in place and boxing continued as a back alley sport that the Olympics Committee wished didn’t exist.
So now we come to that fight. Yesterday a bantamweight from Azerbaijan, Magomed Abdulhamidov, was beaten so badly by the third round that he clearly didn’t want to continue. Yet he was ordered to keep boxing by a referee from Turkmenistan who chose not to recognize the series of knockdowns as knockdowns and never even started a count. The judges gave it to the barely conscious fighter, and Bob Papa and Teddy Atlas just about had twin cows right there at ringside while fans sounded ready to tear the ring apart with their teeth. The fighter from Japan, Satoshi Shimizu, looked flabbergasted, and the one from Azerbaijan ashamed and shaken.
Eventually the AIBA found a scapegoat — the referee, who was later banished from the Games. This one was just too obvious, so after Japan protested the AIBA reversed the decision. And apparently nothing happened to the judges, who will go on to “judge” other matches. There had been rumbling in other matches, but this one took the cake and the rest of the bakery. Yes, money has exchanged hands and favors were bestowed in response. It’s on the record.
The one good thing about this is that if the American team wins no medals, which appears to be the way it’s headed, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
There’s a lot of ugly stuff to digest here, but what got to me personally was a ridiculous pronouncement by The New Yorker magazine that boxing fans “are unlikely to be unduly upset by any of this.”
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