Boxing: Reds or Tails

Right.  Day five.  I've been watching sport continuously for about a hundred and thirty hours now.  Things are getting a tiny bit fuzzy around the edges.  What I need is a sport whose rules I already know.  Boxing.  Perfect.  And we're in the arena, the seats are pretty good, and Steve Bunce (British voice of boxing and Legend of Radio Five Live's Fighting Talk) is sitting at the press benches.  And he's really friendly!  This is starting so well!

Madeley.  Bunce.  King.  One day this will be a Fighting Talk line up.

Then boxing happens.  For those of you who've never known boxing in any form other than the bloated, showbiz behemoth that happens in Las Vegas casinos during the middle of the night, the Olympics is something else.  An amateur competition, the object is to land as many punches as possible, rather than one or two well-timed super blows.  The first bouts are at Bantamweight, one of the lightest weight classes.  Fighters must weigh in under 56kg, or about 8 3/4 stone.  This makes for incredibly fast-paced action, sharing more in common with the fencing I saw yesterday than a heavyweight slugfest.

In the first fight, the Cuban fighter Alvarez Estrada, in the red corner, takes on an American opponent fighting in blue.  We're into the political allegory already.  From James Jeffries, the 'Great White Hope' of the turn of the last century, through the fights between the black American Joe Louis and Hitler's German champion Max Schmelling in the 1930s, to  Rocky IV, boxing has often come to mirror politics - or perhaps the other way around.  The Cuban triumphs this time, despite two of the judges giving each of the three rounds to the American.

Amateur boxing is scored by five judges, spread evenly around the ring.  They push a red or blue button on their desks each time they see a legal punch land, and if three push the same colour at once, a point is awarded.  I'm amazed that judges watching the same fight can score the second round 6-3 to America and 8-5 to Cuba respectively, but the small men have fists flying at such speeds that line of sight can totally alter your perception of the contest.  The American, Joseph Diaz Jr, hits harder, but reigning World Champion Estrada throws more shots, and that's the key to victory in this format.

The six bantamweights who follow lack the class of Estrada, but have their strengths too.  Brazilian Viera dances a latin beat into the ring, and beats a stiff Russian with flair.  Irishman John Joe Nevin is a master at jumping out of the way, leaving his Khazakh opponent flailing like a man trying to punch a ghost.  A 21 year old Mexican, Fierro, has fists which flash out and back into his body again like a chameleon catching flies.  All are victorious out of the red corner.

Now we see some heavyweights.  The difference is startling, like slowing down onto local roads after a long drive at motorway speeds.  There's more power here, too.  And we're back to the politics - it's USA vs Russia!  Rocky Balboa vs Ivan Drago!  Some names may have been changed to protect those born before 1990.  The fight of the afternoon so far finishes in a 10-10 tie, with the Russian emerging the victor having had a fractionally better final round.  He's been in red, too, which is starting to look like it might help.

Another bout goes to the red corner.  Contest number seven is between the world number 4, in blue, and an Argentine who lost in the first round of his only World Championships.  This streak ends here, right?  The unheralded South American crushes his opponent, 13-5.  I'm starting to wonder about probability theory.

The Super-Heavyweights enter the ring, men with no upper limit on weight at all.  They all seem to have names like mechanical dinosaurs from some oddball Japanese cartoon - Magomedrasul and Megomed.  They are vast, and when they land punches the damage is more than a simple point.  The big variations in the judges' scores are gone now - a solid punch is powerfully obvious to everyone in the arena.  A Congolese fighter has his fight stopped to prevent him taking further punishment; he gets the biggest cheer of the day for his bravery in defeat.

Another Russian beats another American.  The reds keep on winning.  The sense of a political metaphor is growing unbearable.  Ten fights have come and gone, ten fighters in the red corner have emerged victorious.  I make that streak about 500-1 odds.  An Italian comes out in blue and wins the last fight of the evening in superb style.  The dream of a redwash is over.

This Italian is Roberto Cammarrelle, the defending champion.  This is itself is a rarity.  After Olympic gold, the vast majority of these amateur fighters in high demand are drawn into the professional game by high profile and huge financial incentive.  For a European boxer to resist these and remain amateur for another Olympiad is rare.  I make a mental note to support anyone who's back to defend a title.

The spectator experience, as I found in the Excel centre yesterday during the fencing, wasn't up to the best venues of the Olympics.  The roof is low, so grandstands are on a shallow gradient, keeping you well back from the action and hoping not to have anyone tall sit in front of you.  Surely boxing deserved more than this. I'm surprised it couldn't have filled a much better spectator venue like Earls Court.  I'm back there next week for table tennis and taekwondo, so will hope it's not the case throughout the centre.