Women’s Boxing For 2012 Olympics
The BBC is reporting that women’s boxing has been added to the list of sports to be competed in the 2012 Olympic games.
Women boxers will get the chance to compete for gold at London 2012 after a decision by the International Olympic Committee’s executive board.
Boxing had been the only Olympic event without any female participants.
Three women’s weight classes will be added, with one men’s class dropped to make room for them.
This is something which has been discussed for a long time, and I’m glad to see it finally get the go ahead. The biggest star in Women’s boxing right now is Ireland’s Katie Taylor. Taylor is considered to be one of the best pound for pound amateur boxers in the world. Katie is already a two time world champion and three time European champion. She is an incredible boxer, and it would have been a real shame if she and other top female fighters were denied the opportunity to showcase their skills on the Olympic stage.
This is actually very cool news. With women’s MMA on the upswing (well, until Gina loses), I think boxing should take advantage of it. They’ve had Christy Martin and Leila Ali before who weren’t huge draws, but did put women’s boxing on the map, at least professionally.
I’m all for it.
Do we know which weight class gets cut for the dudes?
I’m not sure which weight is getting dropped. Hopefully it’s one of the middle of the road type classes, whereby the guys can just shuffle into the weights either side and nobody is being put out too much. The weights for women are flyweight, lightweight and middleweight.
This is definitely the way to go. The standard of women’s boxing is said to be improving constantly, and it’s beginning to produce lots of good fighters. I remember Steve Bunce had a feature on women’s boxing on his how a few months back. It was mainly dealing with the professional side of things like you mentioned, but he was just saying that the problem initially was that there was not enough top level performers. So you were getting girls who weren’t real fighters on big shows, and it hurt it’s credibility overall. He said the level has advanced to such a degree now that it has the potential to work much better. I think the Olympic option will mean it progresses even further as I believe every athlete should want to represent their country at the Olympics.
I would say that its going to be one of the big stories going into the games. I expect there to be a lot of media attention on it with it being the first time women have ever competed. I also imagine that most of that will be focused on Katie Taylor as the star of it. There’s going to be a lot of weight put on this young lady’s shoulders. She probably played a very significant role in getting the sport added by being such a great ambassador for women’s boxing. All the attention will be on her. She is already a star here. She fought an amateur showcase bout on the Bernard Dunne undercard and every seat was filled. That was not the case for any of the other support fights. Everyone will be expecting her to cruise to the gold. It’s a pretty tough position to be in.