Britain's Amateur scene

[jameswilson]

Just thought I'd start a thread on this as I can remember back when I first started following boxing seriously around 10 years ago our amateur pedigree was a bit hit and miss and we tended to only get 1 or 2 guys going to Olympic competitions. Now however 2 guys coming back with medals seems to be the norm and we are also getting medals at World and European amateur championships. What is it that has brought this about? Was it the success Haye, Froch and Audley (and later on much better documented Khan) had at the World championships and Olympics, that were televised that encouraged some young people to lace a set of gloves up? I think I remember some big change in setup within the British amateur setup at one point with Richie Woodhall's expertise being used. Did this have a big effect?

I'm not big on how the Irish amateur scene has developed in the last 10 years maybe the Irish champs here can shed some light on how much success their guys have had, I'm aware of the obvious names who had success at the Olympics but outside of that the Irish lads would probably be better ones to comment.

Thoughts?

[mickey1975]

i personaly think that the amateur boxing scene will not move forward until they have some form of league that shows how many fighters are winning and loosing in each gym because there are many coaches in the amateurs that get massive respect because of time served but in reality dont produce winners yet some coaches who havent been in the game long could be churning out winners and go unoticed if they had a league table they could flag these coaches to see why there fighters are loosing so much they could offer retraining as there isnt much cpd courses right now it should be similar to the pros where a fighter who looses 4 times in a row would be flagged and pulled infront of board the amateurs need something similar and fighters need to be taught how to sell tickets as thats a massive part of being a pro and if you havent done it before it can be stressfull especialy on a debut

But the amateurs have moved forward.Also,not every amateur dreams of been a pro.Selling tickets for your on club show is helping out the funding of your own club and not something that can be taught.Some sell a lot,some dont.As for the four losses idea,sorry,mate,it sounds mad.Some amateurs,especially schoolboys can lose four times to the same lad.They could be the only well matched pair in that area and share great even fights and one would still walk away with four losses.Defeats dont mean a lot in the ams.If someone was getting stopped on a regular basis their coach should either match them a lot better or protect them from themselves.Dodgy decisions and bad reffing are rife as well,but sort of accepted with a shrug of the shoulders.

[Scrap]

Most of the Top Amatuers are Pro, the whole setup is Pro. Simple really