Early beginnings Amateur boxing emerged as a sport during the mid-to-late 19th century, partly as a result of the moral controversies surrounding professional
prize-fighting. Originally lampooned as an effort by upper and middle-class
gentlemen to co-opt a traditionally
working class sport, the safer, "scientific" style of boxing found favour in schools, universities and in the armed forces, although the champions still usually came from among the urban poor.
Development . The Queensberry Amateur Championships continued from
1867 to
1885, and so, unlike their professional counterparts, amateur boxers did not deviate from using gloves once the
Queensberry Rules had been published. In England, the
Amateur Boxing Association (A.B.A.) was formed in
1880 when twelve clubs affiliated. It held its first championships the following year. Four weight classes were contested: Featherweight (9
stone), Lightweight (10 stone), Middleweight (11 stone, 4 pounds) and Heavyweight (no limit). (A stone is equal to 14 pounds.) By
1902, American boxers were contesting the titles in the A.B.A. Championships, which, therefore, took on an international complexion. By
1924, the A.B.A. had 105 clubs in affiliation. Boxing first appeared at the Olympic Games in
1904 and, apart from the Games of
1912, has always been part of them. From 1904 to 2020, the
United States and
Cuba won the most gold medals; 50 for the U.S. (117 overall) and 41 (78 overall) for
Cuba. Internationally, amateur boxing spread steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, but when the first international body, the Fédération Internationale de Boxe Olympique (International Olympic Boxing Federation) was formed in
Paris in 1920, there were five member nations. In
1946, when the
International Amateur Boxing Association (A.I.B.A.) was formed in London, twenty-four nations from five continents were represented, and the A.I.B.A. continued to be the official world federation of amateur boxing the following decades. The first World Amateur Boxing Championships were staged in
1974, prior to that only regional championships took place, the only worldwide event apart from the Olympics were
World Military Boxing Championships first conducted in
1947 and ever since by the
CISM.
Results Bouts which end this way may be noted in English or in French (which was the AIBA
official language). Amateur boxing does not recognize terms "knockout", and "technical knockout", instead it use the following terms: All wins, losses, or mismatches except for those achieved by way of a clean knockout, or
in absentia, are disputable, and could be contested legally through an appeal to the governing bodies.
Scoring Amateur boxing to this day have several scoring systems, depending on the tournament regulations and sanctioning authority. Several archaic score systems, that survived to the 1980s (and in some places to this day), the first of which is a 3-point system, which gave one point for each of three rounds (therefore 3–0 stands for a clean victory by points, 2–1 means that defeated opponent dominated one round, 1–1–1 stands for a
draw or
ex aequo, which was a very rare occurrence). It coexisted for a long time with 3-vote decision system, and 5-vote decision system, which resembled professional boxing decision-making system, it took five judges voting either for victory or a draw (in the 5-vote system, 5–0 stands for
unanimous decision, 4–1 for
majority decision, 3–2 for
split decision, 3–1–1 for split decision and one judge ruled a draw. In the 3-vote system, 3–0 stands for unanimous decision, 2–1 for split decision, 0–0–3 for a draw, with no majority decision option). Depending on the tournament regulations an extra round or rounds could be appointed on the
sudden death principle if there was no clear winner. All mentioned systems were practised in combination with each other (i.e. judges were supposed not only to pick up a winner, but also to fill-in scorecards), creating complexity with points, scorecards, etc. Tournaments and championships usually employed the 5-vote system. International duals usually employed the 3-vote system, with two judges represented the guest nation, and one judge represented the host nation. Both systems lead to a number of controversial and officially contested results, as punch statistics (thrown-to-landed) mostly wasn't accounted for by either one. At the
1960 Rome Olympics preliminaries, after Soviet
Oleg Grigoryev was controversially ruled a winner over Great Britain's
Francis Taylor, the IOC decided to relieve some 15 of the referees and judges of their duties before the quarterfinals. After the
1988 Seoul Olympics controversy, when the clearly dominant finalist
Roy Jones Jr. of the U.S. (whom even the Soviet judges ruled to be a winner, let alone the commentators and his beaten opponent, who himself apologized for the injustice) was virtually robbed of the gold medal, a new system was created and implemented, where only clean punches score, although a controversy still exist as to what is a
clean punch in one's personal opinion, leading to another dubious results. The semifinals of the
1996 Atlanta Olympics proved the new points system susceptible to controversy as well, when Kazakhstani
Vassiliy Jirov was pronounced a 15–9 score winner over U.S.
Antonio Tarver, with many observers were left confused, believing Tarver was dominant through the entire bout. Computer scoring was introduced to the Olympics in 1992. Each of the five judges had a keypad with a red and a blue button. The judges pressed a button for which ever corner they felt landed a scoring blow. Three out of the five judges had to press the button for the same boxer within a one-second window in order for the point to score. A legal scoring blow was that which is landed cleanly with the knuckle surface of the glove, within the scoring area from the middle of the head, down the sides and between the hips through the belly button. In case of a tied match, each judge would determine a winner. The AIBA introduced a new scoring system in January 2011. Each judge gives an individual score for each boxer. The score given to each boxer would be taken from 3 out of 5 judges either by similar score or trimmed mean. Scores are no longer tracked in real time and are instead given at the end of each round. On March 13, 2013, the computer scoring system was abandoned, with amateur boxing instead using the
ten point must system, similar to professional boxing.
Awards Amateur boxing awards system in essence duplicates the Olympic awards system with minor differences: • Winner of the final round receives
gold medal (1st place) • Other finalist receives
silver medal (2nd place) • Semifinalists, who didn't qualify for the finals, receive
bronze medal (3rd place) :* Since most tournaments follow international regulations, including a 30-day suspension for knockout losses, both losers are awarded bronze medals. Some tournaments where only one third place available (instead of usual two), or where semifinals produce more than two bronze claimants, 3rd place bouts constitute a separate round. However, the third-place match is not held in most jurisdictions because of the automatic suspension making such a match improbable. The United States tournaments and championships (except for those affiliated with
World Boxing), contrary to European equivalent, usually do not award silver medals and bronze medals for 2nd and 3rd place respectively, as they acknowledge only the winners. Hence its colloquial name "
Golden Gloves" (implying the
winner takes all principle, which they are based upon). This is a parallel to professional boxing, which also does not use such terms as "second place" or "third place", it accepts only "champion" and "challenger".
Protective equipment In March 2016, protective headgear that had been in use since 1982 was removed from men's competition due to higher concussion rates occurring in fights using headgear than in fights without the headgear. Women's competition was unaffected, as the AIBA announced that there wasn't enough data on its effects on women. This ruling was in place at the
2016 Summer Olympics.
Professional admittance On several occasions in the 1990s, professional boxers, mostly from the
post-Soviet states, resumed their amateur careers, namely:
Nikolay Kulpin and
Oleg Maskaev in 1993,
Nikolai Valuev in 1994,
Ruslan Chagaev in 1998. In June 2016, professional boxers were admitted in the Olympic Games and other tournaments sanctioned by the AIBA. This was done in part to level the playing field and provide all of the athletes with the same opportunities as government-sponsored boxers from socialist countries and post-Soviet republics. However,
professional organizations strongly opposed that decision. Prior to this decision, amateur boxers from Western countries did not tend to compete at successive Olympic Games, as they typically turned professional after participating in the Games or other major international events. Meanwhile, boxers from Cuba and certain post-Soviet states, where professional sports are currently or were previously banned, were often state-sponsored. Though arguably professionals
de facto, these athletes remained officially amateur. ==Competitions==