Canadian Olympic boxing hopefuls poised to benefit from traditional powers in decline at Pan Am Games

October 20, 2023

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48743678571 — 13 Canadian athletes are set to compete when tournament begins Oct. 1

When the Pan Am Games boxing tournament kicks off Oct. 19, Canada will field a full slate of competitors as 13 Canadian boxers are scheduled to make the trip to Santiago, Chile. That’s one for each weight class in both gender categories.

The group also provides plenty of reasons for optimism that Canada, which produced medallists at every Olympic Games from 1984 through 1996, might make some noise in the Olympic boxing tournament next summer in Paris.

First, there’s the Wayne Gretzky Theory, the one about missing all the shots you don’t take. Canada’s maxed-out boxing team is set to take a lot of shots. Canada’s best showing at a Pan Am games came in 2015, when they won six medals. Unless you’re Cuba or the U.S., you’re always a long shot to repeat a performance that strong, but a boxer in each division gives Canada a chance.

Of course, none of it is anywhere close to guaranteed. This is boxing, after all, where the biggest fights often take place outside the ring, and where the International Olympic Committee and the International Boxing Association (IBA) are still locked in a bitter feud that could affect the future of Olympic boxing.

IBA is the FIFA of pugilism, the main organizer of large-scale Olympic-style boxing competitions, and the target of criticism — often well-deserved — over corruption, poor officiating and murky funding sources. The IOC’s specific beef with IBA these days concerns the boxing organization’s president, a businessman from Uzbekistan with alleged links to organized crime, and IBA’s dependence on money from Gazprom, Russia’s state energy corporation.

In June, the IOC cut ties with IBA. Boxing will remain on the Olympic schedule, but IBA will not oversee the competition, the way World Athletics does Olympic track and field, or FIBA runs Olympic basketball. The IOC will oversee the Olympic tournament, just like it did in 2021, and the average spectator likely won’t be able to tell the difference.

But the move does have implications for athletes, and for fans trying to follow them on their path to Paris 2024.

Finalists secure Olympic berth

The most obvious change is also the most welcome — a streamlined Olympic qualifications process for boxers from the Americas. If you make the finals in Santiago, you earn a spot in Paris. In two women’s weight classes — 57 and 60 kilograms — Olympic berths go to all four semifinalists. That setup raises the stakes for the Pan Am boxing tournament, which goes from a fairly high-level competition to a de-facto Olympic qualifier. Athletes who don’t make the podium this month will have other chances to qualify, but a top-two finish at Pan Ams is the most direct path for athletes, and the easiest method for fans to follow.

Which brings us back to team Canada, which has a chance to earn several Olympic spots this month, and an opportunity to restore some glory to a once-proud boxing program.

In 1984, Canadian boxers won three medals — silvers from Willie DeWit and Shawn O’Sullivan, and a bronze from Dale Walters. Four years later, Lennox Lewis won super-heavyweight gold, while Egerton Marcus took silver at light-heavyweight, and Ray Downey earned light-middleweight bronze. In 1992, Marc Leduc won silver and Chris Johnson took bronze, and in 1996 heavyweight David Defiagbon won a silver medal.

Since then, no Canadian boxer has even qualified for an Olympic semifinal. At times, Canada has struggled to simply qualify boxers for the main Olympic draw. The 2016 team comprised just three competitors — Arthur Biyarslanov, Mandy Bujold and Ariane Fortin. In 2021, five Canadian boxers competed in Tokyo, but none won a medal.

It’s worth mentioning that six of Canada’s Olympic boxing medals came in 1984 and 1988, Olympic games that Cuba, with its powerhouse boxing squad, boycotted.

Cuba remains serious about boxing, but the country’s once-powerful program is in disarray, a steady stream of defections costing the team both depth and top-level talent. Olympic champion Andy Cruz was the top Cuban amateur of his generation; he left the country for good last November, and has resurfaced in Philadelphia and is now 1-0 as a pro. Cuba’s only gold medallist at this year’s IBA world championships, light-heavyweight Yoenlis Hernandez, has also moved on, abandoning the team during a layover on the return trip home.

So the team Cuba figures to field at Pan Ams might mirror the one they sent to the World Baseball Classic, full of loyal-to-the-regime veterans who likely peaked a few years ago. But where the baseball team summoned a few current major leaguers as reinforcements, the boxing program has to fill the voids created by Cruz and Hernandez from within, even as talented young fighters leave the country.

American boxers not prioritizing Olympics

In the U.S., meanwhile, Olympic boxing has gone from appointment television to a broadcast afterthought, and young boxers who once aimed to parley Olympic medals into lucrative promotional deals have found other ways to grow their fan bases.

Curmel Moton, a 17-year-old boxing prodigy, and a protégé of 1996 bronze medallist Floyd Mayweather, is a case in point. If he had come of age in the 1980s, he might have prioritized the Olympics, where a medal could build his following and boost his earning power. Instead, he’s growing up in the social media age. He has 360,000 Instagram followers, and a feed sprinkled with clips of training, sparring and big tournament wins. Instead of waiting for the Olympics, he has already turned pro, and made his pro debut at T-Mobile Arena.

What do those developments have to do with Team Canada?

Everything.

Turmoil among the programs that normally top the medal table can create opportunities for teams prepared and positioned to take advantage. Team Canada already knows how that goes. In 2015 in Toronto, Canada won six Pan Am boxing medals — three gold and three bronze. Only Cuba, behind Cruz and a crew of all-stars, managed more.

Of course, host countries tend to overperform at multisport events like the Olympics and Pan Am games, and this is boxing, so we can’t ignore the possibility that judges granted every benefit of every doubt to hometown fighters. That year the U.S. either couldn’t, or simply didn’t, send a full squadron of future superstars, which underscores the bigger point ahead of the 2023 tournament.

Traditional powers are either in decline or in transition, creating room for new players.

Will Canada be one of them? Right now, that’s unclear. But with 13 boxers slated to compete in Santiago, and Olympic berths at stake, Team Canada is well-positioned to find out.