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EPISODE: Episode 11
Boxers preparing for the Olympics include those in the Philippines is in the news on this episode, and is the news that gyms in the UK are opening. Join us on our on-going exploration of the Olympics to be held in Tokyo 2021, featuring Christian from the Friday Night Panel, and the route to the ring. Watch TalkinFight weekdays at 12, 4, 7, and 8:30pm EST on YouTube or LIVE at talkinfight.com/live @Olympic @IOC Media @torchrelay @AIBA
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#boxer #boxing #boxingtalkshow
Transcribed:
Hello boxing fans around the world.
Thank you once again for joining christian myself for another episode on the olympics on talk and fight.
How are you today christian? Well, i’m i’m good uh yourself, good, i’m great! I’M! I’M really excited about uh, it’s friday, friday’s always a good day.
It’S jam-packed lots of things to do lots of stuff to talk about typically everyone’s happy.
Unfortunately, this is gon na be.
This is a bit of a rough one.
The olympic boxing qualification tournament for the americas has been cancelled.
Wow.
I wasn’t expecting that.
No, i i didn’t think you were um yeah, sir.
I know it’s all doom and gloom these days guys but uh that i mean that this is.
This is big news, so uh, an official press release statement has been released and i’m gon na i’m gon na read it for you here now and we’ll give you an idea of what their what their thought process was and where we’re going from here.
More importantly, so, uh loose end 15th april 2021.
The ioc boxing tax task force has been monitoring the situation in argentina and the americas ahead of the boxing road to tokyo.
America’S qualifier scheduled to take place in buenos aires argentina from the 10th to the 16th of may 2021.
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In recent weeks, tighter travel restrictions and lockdowns have been implemented across the region which have significantly disrupted international travel and posed logistical challenges.
To teams traveling to and from buenos aires, jeopardizing their ability to participate in the tournament.
Given the nature of the event as an olympic qualifier, which will award a large number of direct quota places 49 in this particular case for the olympic games, tokyo 2020, ensuring a fair access to ensure fair access and safe environment for all athletes and officials is of The greatest importance this is in line with the key principles followed by the boxing task force, which remains committed to delivering a fair and equitable olympic qualification process, providing certainty to the athletes and allowing sufficient time for them to prepare for tokyo 2020, while always prioritizing athlete Health and safety, unfortunately, the current situation in the region does not provide the assurances needed for these principles to be followed at the event scheduled in buenos aires.
For this reason, after a thorough assessment and consultations with teams, the boxing task force, ashley athlete ambassadors boxing experts plus the local organizing committee, the boxing task force has decided to cancel the event and restructure the tokyo 2020 qualification pathway for the americas region.
The boxing task force studied alternative options, but due to the complexity and the nature of the sport of boxing and large number of international participants, in this case, it’s 400 people from across 80 nations.
When we take into account technical officials as well as the athletes, it was deemed not possible to either change the location with less than four weeks to go or to reschedule the event for a later date.
There’S a quote here saying this is a difficult decision, but it’s one that puts the boxers first and gives athletes national federations and national olympic committees certainty ahead of the olympic games in tokyo.
Now this is according to boxing task force chair mr morinare watanabe.
He goes on to say that the development of the situation in argentina and across the region and the resulting travel restrictions to and from buenos aires could have resulted in athletes and teams not being able to participate in the qualifier, which is a risk.
That could not be taken.
The tokyo 2020 boxing qualification pathway for the americas region has therefore been restructured in order to reflect the cancellation of the event.
The boxing task force has confirmed the following approach.
Considering that only boxers registered to compete in the americas, qualifier would have had a chance to gain one of those olympic quota places originally at stake.
At the event, the allocation of the 49 athlete quota places that’s 33 for men and 16 for women of the americas.
Olympic qualifier will remain exclusive to the athletes registered for the event.
All 49 quota places for the america’s olympic boxing qualifier will be allocated via the boxing task force rankings, in accordance with section d3 currently found in the tokyo 2020 qualification system.
For boxing that was updated march 2021, so the reallocation now of the 13 quota places originally due to be attained through the world olympic qualifier uh that was and redirected to the americas will now be conducted only after the allocation of the 49 athlete quota places for The americas olympic qualifier and will follow the eligibility criteria found in the current tokyo 2020 qualification system.
For boxing now, it should be noted that the registration of the athletes by their regis by the relevant national federation and uh national olympic committee to participate in the america’s olympic boxing qualifiers will be understood as participating in one of the olympic qualifying events organized by the Boxing task force and serve along with other criteria for the purposes of allocating such quote places an updated version of the tokyo 2020 qualify qualification system for boxing reflecting the aforementioned changes will be published following formal approval by the international olympic committee executive board, which is expected By the 7th of may, the boxing road to tokyo, european qualifier is still due to resume in paris, france, where the event is scheduled to be held from the 4th until the 8th of june, so we’re down another we’re down.
Another tournament is the practical takeaway from this one, graham uh, and this brings with all the same host of problems that we’re seeing with the other ones uh with the other tournaments that have been canceled with the world qualifier.
So we’re going to be looking at rankings going back to 2017.
This is not going to be taking into account uh things like world youth rankings, so some of our younger athletes are definitely going to be uh kind of nudged out of an olympic spot.
At this point, based on the fact that they don’t have relevant rankings going dating back far enough to secure the maquota place now so uh did.
I hear then that the announcement will be made on may 7th as to when like who who can participate like? Is it i think the final announcement, the new the announcement coming out on may 7th is going to be an updated set of guidelines that is now going to show this america’s uh, this america’s tournament as being cancelled, because this announcement will still come out technically before That tournament would have taken place and it’s going to outline more thoroughly than what i’ve done just now in this uh, this press release the actual qualification process.
That’S going to be used in order to select those uh, those quotas, those people to fill those quota spots and again it’s going to look it’s going to look almost identical.
I can’t see it looking any different than what we’re seeing with the canceled world qualifiers that were due to be in paris in june.
So but again those uh the world qualifier spots, as mentioned in this, won’t be handed out for north america.
There’S 13 of those up for grabs as well.
That would have been from that world qualifier tournament in june.
Those are now not going to be awarded to north american athletes until they’ve already decided who the 49 uh sorry.
America is not north american, the until the 49 quota spots for the americas have now been filled.
Then they’ll start looking at who’s the best of the best who didn’t qualify for those first 50 or so spots, and there’s no date, though, as to when those decisions will be made like i’m just curious, whether it’s they’re extending it all the way to july.
Like you find out three days before the olympics that you’re eligible to go play well, no, i wouldn’t think so.
I think as soon as uh as soon as these uh, these quotas are going to be put up.
Then we’re going to have our full card from the olympic from the americas same way that we’re seeing already seeing uh boxers, like nettie patekio out of the philippines who’s already been handed her uh her ticket to japan, based on her rankings from what would have been The world qualifier instead of the world qualifier, so we’re already seeing african asian and oceanic uh boxers, who are already being handed their tickets based on their rankings alone.
So the only thing that has to happen before we will know who’s going to qualify based on rankings outside.
Well, it’s still all gon na be based on rankings.
I guess at the end of the day, this is all getting a little confusing, but the 49 are gon na be the 49 spots are going to be allocated.
That’S that’s going to happen.
The only people eligible for one of those 49 spots are people who are already registered to fight in the tournament.
That’S been cancelled, so if you were already scheduled to fight, you’ve got a chance at one of those spots.
If you were thinking about it and haven’t scanned or hadn’t registered yet then you’re you’re out of luck, even if even if you’re top seeded right now you’re not going to be handed one of those once those are taken care of then they’re going to take as Soon, as that’s taken care of, i have to assume now, then we’re going to hear pretty much instantly who’s going to get those 13 top spots, but it’ll be interesting to see i’m going to have to take a further look into.
This was only announced a few hours ago so because you have to keep in mind as well.
Not every weight class has the same number of quotas being allocated so for certain weight classes, and we saw this in uh.
We saw in the last two uh tournaments as well and uh what we are also seeing at the cancelled world qualifier, where we’re gon na see.
You know for some of the men’s weight classes, we might have four quota spots that still need to be filled, but only three in the women’s classes, in each of the women’s classes and that’s the same whether it was going to be a tournament or whether it Was going to be uh, this new qualification and in a tournament natural tournament set, and what we would have seen is a box off for third place among the bronze medalists to uh, to allocate, if there’s only three spots available, as opposed to four four spots available.
When we obviously we go barnes, both bronze medalists would end up taking a a ticket to tokyo, so i’m not sure which weight classes are going to be affected most strongly by this.
Just yet, i’m going to we’re going to have to take a look into that out of those 49 quoted places and out of those 13 extra quota places from the world qualifier.
How many of those are going to each weight class in the americas that i haven’t.
Looked into as of yet, but i will be looking into to let you know: okay wow, that’s a heavy duty announcement, um, that’s the boxing news today and that’s really the only news dominating the headlines when it comes to amateur boxing olympics olympic boxing.
As you know, we’ve lost another major tournament uh, looking away from the the news headlines, and i won’t go so far as to call this a retraction, but i will i will bring this up here.
Did you happen to catch last bell boxing last night? No, no uh, that was car, our butt, that’s our that’s our friend carl in the uk and his uh boxing channel yeah.
So he had a special guest last night and he brought on mike orr from michael yeah brought on mike or from knuckle up with mike orr at four and uh.
He asked mike exciting a question that he had that he had asked of us.
Well, i asked like him and him, and his panel actually asked mike many questions.
They they put him in the hot seat last night and grilled them for a bit, and i thought mike acquitted himself quite well on the stand.
I might add he only had one or two where i got about one or two answers that got some raised: eyebrows but uh.
The question was about uh uk boxing fans versus north american boxing fans and the general atmosphere in the stadiums.
Now you and i we we uh, we had a bit of a laugh at our uh, our friends across the pond there and chalked it up to drinking habits mike actually had a much more lucid and thoughtful answer.
Hey mike actually outclassed me on this one which i, which is why i feel just bears mentioning here mike mike, made a very, very good point about uh who’s.
Actually, at these fights, when north america versus the uk who’s sitting ringside and mike mike pointed out, you know you go to you, know mgm grand or something like that in vegas they’re, not boxing fans sitting in those first 20 rows behind no they’re businessmen, they’re corporate Seats that have been handed out to businessmen who are doing business deals in their seats they’re, not watching the fights they’re, not they’re, not big fight fans.
They don’t.
You know there are money riding on this, so to speak, whereas in the uk there’s less of a culture of just handing out those corporate seats for as a you know, bribes, the wrong word but uh inducement shall we say uh so you’re more likely to get The actual fans a little closer to the ring, and that was mike’s theory, and i you know hats off to him on that one.
I took the easy route and took a poke at our friends uh in the uk, and he actually thought through his answer, and you know he’s right.
I, in my personal opinion, i think, he’s right and that’s why we get the difference in the crowds between here and the uk and not just the uk but other places in the world uh.
I know you you had to leave last uh last week, so you missed part of the panel but uh we’ve uh our little history lesson.
At the beginning of last friday, night’s panel was a newspaper column from toronto in march of 1920.
Talking about the mayor of toronto at a boxing match doing exactly that sitting ringside and not seeing a thing that was happening in front of him because he spent the entire.
You know four or five bouts that he watched shaking hanging out, glad handing left and right and making sure he was seen doing so.
The reason that was relevant was because the article was written by ernest hemingway who, for those of you who don’t know, was for a from about four years, a uh, a journalist for the toronto star and his long and storied career.
But you know so that’s that’s.
As old as bog in north america, at least that’s as old as boxing you know goes, you we’ve always had the glad handing at ringside as opposed to the fans so hats off to mike.
He made a better point than i did where credits do well, we had an opportunity to go down to las vegas last year.
Well, uh can’t remember just before the pandemic or not but uh, they were twenty thousand dollar seats uh and they included some kind of yeah twenty thousand uh and it was hospitality, included, uh, but yeah i mean you know: you’re gon na be pretty friggin wealthy to Be sitting ringside at the mgm uh watching a boxing match for sure? Well, that’s again, that’s that’s why most of these are corporates.
You know we hear twenty thousand dollars.
We always got a private box or i can bring ten of my friends and it’s gon na.
Be open bar and they’ll be food, and you know that’s when i hear twenty thousand dollars they get to go to a mat.
That’S what i’m thinking! That’S one seat, ringside and actually uh they were.
I was fourth throw up because then you’d be in the television view as well.
If you’re actually ringside, you actually wouldn’t be in the television camera’s view, so you’re actually they’re actually cheaper, like i think, fifteen thousand, if you’re actually ringside, but four rows back you’re.
Actually, like face level, if you will and therefore uh you’re, that was the most expensive well, you got ta sit four rows back then uh, graham because otherwise, how will people know that you spent four twenty 20 grand on tickets? That’S right! That’S right! All right! Well, thanks very much for this update, uh, sad news uh for the boxers involved and the trainers and coaches in the countries, but uh the show must go on and i’m sure plans are well underway now to get those right boxes and the rankings all sorted out.
Yeah again, the only people getting really screwed by this are, if you’re on either end of the uh.
The age spectrum is from an olympic standpoint.
They are really young.
Athletes won’t have those the rankings behind them, because uh youth rankings aren’t taken into consideration here and some for some of our older athletes.
You know as they approach 40, because that’s going to be your cutoff for olympic boxing under the rules of the under the ioc rules.
This might have been.
You know some athletes last olympic games who would have possibly qualified under a tournament setting and now that’s it.
That’S all they get yeah, oh well, hopefully, we’ll find something a little bit more fun to chat about uh this evening on the panel, i guess, hopefully we will look at you big mike, bring the plan right on all right.
Christian, we’ll see you in a few hours have a good afternoon.
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