Michael Conlan, right, reacts after he lost a decision to Vladimir Nikitin in a men’s bantamweight quarterfinal bout.
BY NT CORRESPONDENT IN RIO.
The federation for amateur boxing, AIBA has chased away several referees and judges for making costly suspect decisions in bouts at the Rio Olympics.
The axe fell on several of them and to appease the boxing fan base they were removed from the remaining Olympic boxing competition.
It is after AIBA officials reviewed their decisions, fueling suspicion of dubious results in some matches at the Rio Games.
A spokesman for the international federation that governs amateur boxing said Wednesday that the names of the referees and judges who were dismissed and the matches that were tainted would not be released because he did not want to “besmirch their families.”
In a statement, the federation said that the committee that reviews officiating had assessed all 239 bouts at the Rio Games through Tuesday and had found that almost a handful decisions did not meet the criteria set.
It is following a ‘denied victory’ to Irish bantamweight Michael Conlan, who accused the federation of corruption and suggested that Russian boxing officials had bribed judges.
Conlan’s accusations came in
an expletive-filled tirade after he lost his quarterfinal bout to Vladimir Nikitin of Russia.
Nikitin was awarded a unanimous decision, but the public response to the verdict suggested that many observers believed Conlan should have won.
The judges’ decision in the Conlan-Nikitin fight was not the first one at the Rio Games to draw scrutiny. On Monday, the crowd jeered when another Russian fighter, Evgeny Tishchenko, was awarded a unanimous decision over Vassiliy Levit of Kazakhstan, who appeared to have won the bout handily.
The boxing federation did not say specifically how many decisions it deemed insufficient, nor did it specify what was wrong with those decisions. None of the decisions will be overturned, AIBA said.
