by S. Graveson

Created on: March 16, 2009   Last Updated: October 20, 2009

Olympic boxing's greatest fighters is rather like history's greatest basketball players as theirs so many to choose form, do we go with dominance like Mirkam or Wilt Chamberlin managed, or the flair and draw that someone like Larry Bird or Magic Johnson had, and how can we forget the the player that made the Bulls a dominant team through the 90's Michael Jordan.

So with amateur boxing, admittedly our task is slightly different, in basketball we may have best point guard, where as in boxing we have the different weight classes. We have those that went onto great achievements as professionals, and we had those that never went professional, we have those that dominated one and failed at the other, and those that seemed average as amateurs who went on to take major honours as professionals.

Amateur boxing in it's current guise is fought under 3 rounds of 3 minutes (as of the start of 2009) so at the time of writing no major championship has been fought under this rule, the old format of 4 rounds of 2 minutes will therefore be what terms like "went the distance" relate to.

The sport is competed at the Olympics, the Commonwealth games, The world championships, The European Championships and the Pan Am games as far as major tournaments are concerned. And unlike professional boxing, there is more focus on technique and less focus on brute power and wars of attrition, with a points scoring system based on clean accurate punching, as opposed to the professional system of 10 points must. A point is scored for a clear punch to the head or body with the white portion of the glove, though often (as seen in the 2008 Olympics) the scoring appears flawed is not incorrect with regards to body shots. A point is also scored for a knock down, which seems rather bizarre (in professional boxing a knock down would usually guarantee a 10-8 round, a larger advantage than a single point). The points system isn't the only way to win a contest, the referee can also stop a fight for one of several reasons, such as a fighter being outclassed, or being injured, much like in the professional ranks.

The current points system came to the sport after the infamous 1988 Seoul Olympics where American fighter Roy Jones Junior was by all accounts robbed of a gold medal in his contest against Park Si-Hun in the light middleweight final. The fight resulted in 3 of the 5 judges for the contest being stripped and suspended as the Korean took the most infamous decision in amateur boxing history 3-2 despite

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