Olympic Print Boxing Results Can Be Deceiving

In our light heavyweights first day summary we said that Tajikstan’s Djakhon Kurbanov “dominated” defending world champ Abbos Atoev and merely that the referee stopped Croatian Marijo Sivolija-Jelica bout against Samoan Satupaitea Farani Tavui in the third round.

That was before we saw the matches on TV which were shown on tape delay in the United States. We take back everything we said. Print results can be deceiving. To our eyes Djakhon Kurbanov didn’t dominate Abbos Atoev at all. The fight looked very close to us. In fact we might have even thought Atoev landed more clean punches than the boxer who supposedly beat him 11-3. Sometimes amateur boxing ridiculous scoring system can be very frustrating.

In the other fight were amending our judgment to Croatian Marijo Sivolija-Jelica didn’t just defeat Tavui by a bland referee stoppage. In fact Sivolija-Jelica destroyed Tavui with a clean right hook to the temple. The ref stopped the action and the Samoan stumbled around for an excruciatingly long time around the ring before collapsing to the ground getting up and collapsing again. Tavui was carried out of the ring on a stretcher but the announcers insisted that the gurney was used only for precautionary reasons. Sivolija-Jelica won by a devastating knockout and we apologize for not giving him his just due.