Does the Olympic Gold medal predict success at heavyweight?

[pound per pound]

The correlation between Olympic Gold at heavy / super heavy who went professional in modern times says over 50% win a world professional championship.

Prove your stats.

I did on page two. Okay I can reposted it.


I guess I need to clarify success for the gold medal winners in the amateurs. For the purpose of this thread, success is winning a version of the WBC, WBA, IBF, or WBO championship as a professional heavyweight. I think we need to disqualify the fighters who won gold, but were not allowed to turn professional due to political reasons.

From 1964 to present, here are the results:

• Joe Frazier: (W = 32; L = 4; D = 1) = A dead-cert all-time great who held the world heavyweight title from 1968 until 1973


George Foreman: (W = 76; L = 5) = A two-time world heavyweight champion, scorimg victories over the likes of Joe Frazier, Kenny Norton and Michael Moorer. One of the biggest punchers in heavyweight history


• Henry Tillman: (W = 25; L = 6) = He never made it as a top-tier world-class fighter ** Won gold in a very weak field with no cubans or soviet's.**

• Ray Mercer: (W = 36; L = 7; D = 1) = Briefly held the WBO world heavyweight title, but wasn't quite good enough to make it as a top-tier world-class fighter, despite his competitive fights against Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield


• Odlanier Solís: (W = 20; L = 3) = Despite a promising start to his career, he never maintained his weight and fitness levels, resulting in him being stopped in the 1st round of his only shot at the world title. Has subsequently ballooned to weighing more than 270lbs and no longer commands respect as an opponent


• Rakhim Chakhkiev: (W = 23; L = 1) = Currently campaigning as a cruiserweight, was KO'd in his only shot at the world title and is currently regarded as a fringe contender

• Oleksandr Usyk: (W = 7) = Has only recently begun his professional career as cruiserweight and is only a novice
*** Looks like the best cruiser, could be the man after Wlad retires. Too young to rate **

• Tyrell Biggs: (W = 30; L = 10) = Was absolutely battered by Mike Tyson when he gained a premature shot at the world title and was subsequently considered as a journeyman for rising stars to gain knockouts for their highlight reels

• Lennox Lewis: (W = 41; L = 2; D = 1) = A three time world heavyweight champion, considered one of the all-time-greats, scoring victories over the likes of Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson and Vitali Klitschko


• Wladimir Klitschko: (W = 64; L = 3) = One of the longest reigning heavyweight champions of all time

• Audley Harrison: (W = 31; L = 7) = A domestic level fighter that managed to briefly capture the European title, before being KO'd inside three rounds by David Haye, whilst managing to only land a single jab throughout the entire fight

• Alexander Povetkin: (W = 29; L = 1) = Is currently rated as the second best heavyweight on the planet, behind Wladimir Klitschko who decked him four times en route to losing by a lop-sided 119-104 margin on the scorecards. Has never held a legitimate "senior" version of the world title

• Anthony Joshua: (W = 13) = Has only recently begun his professional career and is only a novice. ** Too early to rate **


Tally:

6 Gold medal winners were successful enough to win a world title belt.
5 Crashed and burned
2 are too early to call.

Success rate = 54.5% in modern times since 1964.

Key:
Green = success
Red = Failure
Orange = too early to grade

[Counter-puncher]

V-E-R-N Vern

[Counter-puncher]

Who's on first base?

[pound per pound]

fergusg

I refuse to believe that during every Olympic year, you’d be willing to place a bet, immediately before each tournament, with a genuine expectation that you’d stance a 54.6% chance of correctly predicting that at least one of the heavyweight gold medalists would eventually capture a legitimate version of the world heavyweight championship in the pro ranks!

You seem to have trouble acknowledging points made in this thread. Instead you create your own and won't budge even if the data you are using is older than you are That is not a fair way to talk about anything.

The gold medal winner who turns professional wins a world title belt champion more often than not since 1964. That was my data and it is correct. Fighters from East Europe and Cuba are much more likely to go pro today.

What is your opinion on this? Do you think either the gold medal winner in 2012 ( Joshua or Usyk ) , or 2016 ( 2 fighters ) will win a world title belt sometime in their career as a heavyweight. If so, how many? Right now Wlad has a vice like grip on IBF, WBO, WBA heavyweight belts for at least 2016. My guess would be two fighters who won gold in 2012 and 2016 will win a heavyweight world title belt sometime in their career. Wining a major belt is being very successful.

[Butterbean]

fergusg

I refuse to believe that during every Olympic year, you’d be willing to place a bet, immediately before each tournament, with a genuine expectation that you’d stance a 54.6% chance of correctly predicting that at least one of the heavyweight gold medalists would eventually capture a legitimate version of the world heavyweight championship in the pro ranks!

You seem to have trouble acknowledging points made in this thread. Instead you create your own and won't budge even if the data you are using is older than you are That is not a fair way to talk about anything.

The gold medal winner who turns professional wins a world title belt champion more often than not since 1964. That was my data and it is correct. Fighters from East Europe and Cuba are much more likely to go pro today.


What is your opinion on this? Do you think either the gold medal winner in 2012 ( Joshua or Usyk ) , or 2016 ( 2 fighters ) will win a world title belt sometime in their career as a heavyweight. If so, how many? Right now Wlad has a vice like grip on IBF, WBO, WBA heavyweight belts for at least 2016. My guess would be two fighters who won gold in 2012 and 2016 will win a heavyweight world title belt sometime in their career. Wining a major belt is being very successful.

Not if one chooses not to count some major belts in... For some weird reason.

[Bobbyptsd]

I'd be willing to ackknowledge that gold medal winners are more likely to have success recently, particularly since the Soviet Union fell and more guys get out of Cuba.

That being said, I still don't see it as a great predictor. We keep coming back to the same thing it seems. Is winning a gold medal a big accomplishment in itself? Yeah, definitely. Do guys who win gold medals have potential? Sure.

I don't understand why this thread turned into a big semantic argument though. As I've argued before, if the question is does it predict success, well there are several cases where it has panned out, and several where it hasn't.

So again, I'm not getting it or something. I don't understand why that's contentious. If nine out of ten guys who won gold won wortld titles, I'd be inclined to say yes, but as it stands.....

Put it this way: Does the Olympic gold predict being a bust in the pros? Surely that works both ways, right?

[crusader]

I'd be willing to ackknowledge that gold medal winners are more likely to have success recently, particularly since the Soviet Union fell and more guys get out of Cuba.

That being said, I still don't see it as a great predictor. We keep coming back to the same thing it seems. Is winning a gold medal a big accomplishment in itself? Yeah, definitely. Do guys who win gold medals have potential? Sure.

I don't understand why this thread turned into a big semantic argument though. As I've argued before, if the question is does it predict success, well there are several cases where it has panned out, and several where it hasn't.

So again, I'm not getting it or something. I don't understand why that's contentious. If nine out of ten guys who won gold won wortld titles, I'd be inclined to say yes, but as it stands.....

Put it this way: Does the Olympic gold predict being a bust in the pros? Surely that works both ways, right?

It should be easy to understand why it's turned into a semantic argument. How well being Olympic champion predicts certain outcomes depends on how those outcomes are defined, so if success is defined as being a top 25 pro or fighting for a world title, we use modern cases (say from the 60s on), and exclude those who didn't turn pro, winning gold clearly predicts a high chance of professional success, with even some of the supposed 'bust' cases like Biggs and Harrison accomplishing that. If it's winning any version of a big 4 world title the numbers shift, and if it's being the consensus top fighter in the division the numbers shift again.

I don't view predictive power as a binary yes or no concept, but rather one along a gradient. It's clear that winning gold doesn't guarantee that one will be a successful pro going by the OP's definition, but I think it provides evidence that there's a good chance (again back to semantics, as others may define that differently) that they will. I also have a lower threshold for success than the OP does, so I would classify being roughly a top ten fighter as a successful pro outcome, and I think that in a sense many gold medal winners suffer from the very high-standards they people set for them based on their amateur careers.

[Lackeos]

-Super heavyweight is a better predictor than heavyweight. The amateur heavyweight division is the cruiserweight division, and cruiserweights like Chakhkiev do not have as much potential in the professional heavyweight division as dreadnaughts like Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, and Anthony Joshua.
-Winning in a good field matters more than winning in a bad field. Anthony Joshua won in a field with Roberto Cammarelle (3 gold medals, 1 silver, 3 bronze), Magomedrisul Majidov (2 gold medals, 1 bronze, and an AIBA championship), and many others. Audley Harrison won in a field of mediocrity.
-The younger you are, the greater it predicts success. A 30-year-old who wins in a field of 19-year-olds is like a 14-year-old who won a tee-ball championship against 7-year-olds. A 20-year-old who wins against a field of 30-year-old Cuban and Russian sandbaggers who are competing in their fourth Olympics is a real prospect.
-If a fighter doesn't turn pro because they're Cuban or whatever related reasons, then this is not a knock against the predictive factor. They just don't count as part of the data set at all. You have to turn pro to count.
-Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether a gold medal guarantees that a fighter will become undisputed champion. Perhaps it is more a question of "If a fighter turns pro and was an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? If a fighter turns pro and wasn't an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? Is the first number larger than the second number? By how much?"

[crusader]

fergusg, who is currently on your ignore list, made this post.

-Super heavyweight is a better predictor than heavyweight. The amateur heavyweight division is the cruiserweight division, and cruiserweights like Chakhkiev do not have as much potential in the professional heavyweight division as dreadnaughts like Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, and Anthony Joshua.
-Winning in a good field matters more than winning in a bad field. Anthony Joshua won in a field with Roberto Cammarelle (3 gold medals, 1 silver, 3 bronze), Magomedrisul Majidov (2 gold medals, 1 bronze, and an AIBA championship), and many others. Audley Harrison won in a field of mediocrity.
-The younger you are, the greater it predicts success. A 30-year-old who wins in a field of 19-year-olds is like a 14-year-old who won a tee-ball championship against 7-year-olds. A 20-year-old who wins against a field of 30-year-old Cuban and Russian sandbaggers who are competing in their fourth Olympics is a real prospect.
-If a fighter doesn't turn pro because they're Cuban or whatever related reasons, then this is not a knock against the predictive factor. They just don't count as part of the data set at all. You have to turn pro to count.
-Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether a gold medal guarantees that a fighter will become undisputed champion. Perhaps it is more a question of "If a fighter turns pro and was an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? If a fighter turns pro and wasn't an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? Is the first number larger than the second number? By how much?"

Good points, especially the last one. It's more useful to look at in terms of degrees rather than simply yes/no.

[Bard of Boxrec]

fergusg, who is currently on your ignore list, made this post.

Blah blah blah

[Counter-puncher]

we're counting cards

[dominik]

-Super heavyweight is a better predictor than heavyweight. The amateur heavyweight division is the cruiserweight division, and cruiserweights like Chakhkiev do not have as much potential in the professional heavyweight division as dreadnaughts like Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, and Anthony Joshua.
-Winning in a good field matters more than winning in a bad field. Anthony Joshua won in a field with Roberto Cammarelle (3 gold medals, 1 silver, 3 bronze), Magomedrisul Majidov (2 gold medals, 1 bronze, and an AIBA championship), and many others. Audley Harrison won in a field of mediocrity.
-The younger you are, the greater it predicts success. A 30-year-old who wins in a field of 19-year-olds is like a 14-year-old who won a tee-ball championship against 7-year-olds. A 20-year-old who wins against a field of 30-year-old Cuban and Russian sandbaggers who are competing in their fourth Olympics is a real prospect.
-If a fighter doesn't turn pro because they're Cuban or whatever related reasons, then this is not a knock against the predictive factor. They just don't count as part of the data set at all. You have to turn pro to count.
-Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether a gold medal guarantees that a fighter will become undisputed champion. Perhaps it is more a question of "If a fighter turns pro and was an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? If a fighter turns pro and wasn't an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? Is the first number larger than the second number? By how much?"

I agree with that. Joshua won in a pretty strong field, albeit he had some lucky decisions. winning against those older Amateur "pros" is quite impressive (although dychko and Savon are actually younger than AJ).

if a Young and big guy with solid skills like klitschko or AJ wins he is a big prospect.

[pound per pound]

-Super heavyweight is a better predictor than heavyweight. The amateur heavyweight division is the cruiserweight division, and cruiserweights like Chakhkiev do not have as much potential in the professional heavyweight division as dreadnaughts like Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, and Anthony Joshua.

-Winning in a good field matters more than winning in a bad field. Anthony Joshua won in a field with Roberto Cammarelle (3 gold medals, 1 silver, 3 bronze), Magomedrisul Majidov (2 gold medals, 1 bronze, and an AIBA championship), and many others. Audley Harrison won in a field of mediocrity.

-The younger you are, the greater it predicts success. A 30-year-old who wins in a field of 19-year-olds is like a 14-year-old who won a tee-ball championship against 7-year-olds. A 20-year-old who wins against a field of 30-year-old Cuban and Russian sandbaggers who are competing in their fourth Olympics is a real prospect.

-If a fighter doesn't turn pro because they're Cuban or whatever related reasons, then this is not a knock against the predictive factor. They just don't count as part of the data set at all. You have to turn pro to count.

-Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether a gold medal guarantees that a fighter will become undisputed champion. Perhaps it is more a question of "If a fighter turns pro and was an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? If a fighter turns pro and wasn't an amateur gold medalist, what are his chances of winning a title? Is the first number larger than the second number? By how much?"

I agree most with this! Success can be defined in many ways, for me its winning a world title belt, for someone else they have to be a ring magazine / lineal champion.

If Wladimir retires with his belt, it could take years for the next undisputed heavyweight professional champion due to alphabet politics, managerial discussions, and fighters milking a belt. Title unification's matches at heavyweight are rare.

Since 1964 over 50% of the gold medal winners at heavyweight / super heavyweight who went pro won a title. I wanted to skew things, I would have listed Ali too as he won gold, then became a professional heavyweight. There have been some very good silver medalists in Bowe, and Ibragimov. Chagaev who won the world amateur gold twice, but did not get the Olympic gold medal.

I guess you can say if your an Olympic gold, or World amateur champion gold at heavyweight and super heavyweight who turns professional, your changes for success to win a professional world title belt are better than 50/50 in recent times. That above all else was my main point.

The days of the 200-pound professional heavyweight champion are essentially over. You might see an Olympic gold medal winner at heavyweight ( 91k ) become a professional heavyweight, but the more likely case is the gold medal winner at super heavyweight. Usyk I think has the skills and height at 6'3" tall, and skills to win one of the heavyweight professional belts once Wladimir retires. Usyk impresses me a bit more than Povetkin who has had a successful professional career.

Majidov is a brutal destroyer type with size and skills. He has two gold’s in the world amateur championships. I think the world amateur champion at heavy is a little harder to win than the Olympic Gold at super heavy. Majidov is 8-2 in the WSB as of March 2015. If he turns professional I would say he would win a world title belt sometime in his career. The man is battle tested, and his game would be better suited for the pro ranks.

[pound per pound]

fergusg

"Semantics" is not involved, because the OP posed a rather simple question that is easy to answer... it's just that the OP continuously moves the goalposts and refuses to recognise the facts that are easy to research and are also considered irrefutable in nature.

Your issue if you can not accept the data I presented which is correct. Instead you have to move the goal posts back by going back over a 100 years. You should be aware than many nations did not even participate in Olympic boxing back then, and many of the best Soviet and Cuban could not turn professional until recently. Yet use your own data and act like that its common denominator for modern times. Clearly it is not. Things have changed so why use data 100+ years ago when the game was very different in an attempt to justify your point?

My mistake was in the title. If it read has Does the Olympics gold medal champion at heavyweight and super heavyweight since the 1960's an indication of professional success defined as winning a major world title in the professional ranks. Here, you would be out of ammunition on words, but would have plenty of silly icons to spare.

With the modern heavyweight division essentially being dominated by Eastern Europeans who went professional, you have to wonder how much pro boxing history history would have changed if they did so from inception.

[Counter-puncher]

The.... Wheel-Of-FORTUNE!

[crusader]

The.... Wheel-Of-FORTUNE!

Hopefully the word isn't semantics, because someone obviously hasn't looked up its definitions

[Bobbyptsd]

I'd be willing to ackknowledge that gold medal winners are more likely to have success recently, particularly since the Soviet Union fell and more guys get out of Cuba.

That being said, I still don't see it as a great predictor. We keep coming back to the same thing it seems. Is winning a gold medal a big accomplishment in itself? Yeah, definitely. Do guys who win gold medals have potential? Sure.

I don't understand why this thread turned into a big semantic argument though. As I've argued before, if the question is does it predict success, well there are several cases where it has panned out, and several where it hasn't.

So again, I'm not getting it or something. I don't understand why that's contentious. If nine out of ten guys who won gold won wortld titles, I'd be inclined to say yes, but as it stands.....

Put it this way: Does the Olympic gold predict being a bust in the pros? Surely that works both ways, right?

It should be easy to understand why it's turned into a semantic argument. How well being Olympic champion predicts certain outcomes depends on how those outcomes are defined, so if success is defined as being a top 25 pro or fighting for a world title, we use modern cases (say from the 60s on), and exclude those who didn't turn pro, winning gold clearly predicts a high chance of professional success, with even some of the supposed 'bust' cases like Biggs and Harrison accomplishing that. If it's winning any version of a big 4 world title the numbers shift, and if it's being the consensus top fighter in the division the numbers shift again.

I don't view predictive power as a binary yes or no concept, but rather one along a gradient. It's clear that winning gold doesn't guarantee that one will be a successful pro going by the OP's definition, but I think it provides evidence that there's a good chance (again back to semantics, as others may define that differently) that they will. I also have a lower threshold for success than the OP does, so I would classify being roughly a top ten fighter as a successful pro outcome, and I think that in a sense many gold medal winners suffer from the very high-standards they people set for them based on their amateur careers.

I figured it (success) in this case was at least the second part in bold. If one takes it to mean the first part in bold, as you point out the percentage would go up quite a bit.

Just for the record, I'm not saying I think Audley Harrison, for example, is a failure or anything. He accomplished a hell of a lot in boxing terms. I just don't think of him as a highly successful pro, within the parameters I figured we were talking about.

[crusader]

I certainly understand, but the definition of success is very important to answering this question and since the term was originally left undefined like others acknowledged almost immediately, I can see why a semantic issue popped up in the form of the discussion over what equates to success, whether that means being the top fighter at a weight, holding any version of major ABC world title, etc.

[Bobbyptsd]

This is true.

[crusader]

fergusg, who is currently on your ignore list, made this post.

LOL, ferg still trying to argue with me even though he's on ignore. Going by the content of my recent posts I'm assuming he's trying to argue that there was no semantical issue in this discussion, even though one of his posts on the first page noted that OP hadn't defined success and he even pointed out to me that he mentioned this before I did. Then there are other posts which also noted the lack of a definition and offered some possibilities before the OP clarified what he meant, and even after a definition was given ferg and the OP were arguing about whether Mercer and Povetkin were actually 'successful' and whether the standards for this had been changed.....nope, semantics weren't an issue at all!

If I'm off the mark, well at least I didn't have to read the rambling drivel of the most annoying poster on the forum, one who seems to lack the intellectual power to read clearly or argue without resorting to fallacy and distortion.

Keep responding to me though ferg, I can take much more of you now that I'm not reading your dull-brained nonsense. In fact, every time you respond to me from now on I'll post a funny gif for you to enjoy

Let's start with some llama gifs:

[Counter-puncher]

we're counting cards

[crusader]

you don't know what you're talking about

[Counter-puncher]

eh?

[crusader]

eh is right.

go on counting

[crusader]

Perfect