Rocky Juarez uttered the five-letter word: Fixed.
“This guy … it was fixed,” a frustrated Juarez said of his 22-14 loss to Bekzat Sattarkhanov of Uzbekistan in their gold-medal boxing final Sunday. He quickly amended that bitter declaration, which had been prompted partly by the holding tactics of his opponent, but mostly by the Russian referee’s refusal to penalize Sattarhkanov for it.
“Maybe not fixed, but the ref from the same country or neighboring country that was once the same country wanted his fighter to win,” Juarez said. “The ref didn’t want to take any points away.”
After Juarez’s defeat at 125 pounds, the only other American with a shot at a gold medal also lost. Mahamadkadyz Abdullaev of Uzbekistan outpointed Ricardo Williams 27-20 at 139 pounds.
As a result, the U.S. was shut out of a boxing gold medal for the first time since 1948.
“I’ll go down in the history books, but the wrong way, unfortunately,” said coach Tom Mustin, painfully aware of his team’s Olympic epitaph: two silver medals, two bronze. RIP.
The U.S. team filed a formal protest with the sanctioning International Amateur Boxing Association seeking to have the Juarez decision reversed and referee Stanislav Kirsanov suspended. Although the boxing association’s executive committee did suspend Kirsanov for four years without specifying the reason, it did not overturn the decision.
“They took the gold from me,” Juarez said after his 68-fight winning streak ended. The loss was “the last of my amateur career.” The 20-year-old Houston resident plans to turn pro.
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Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, who had to settle for Olympic silver after a controversial disqualification in 1984, said this year’s team should not be slighted for its showing.
“It’s not just about the gold,” Holyfield said. “The big issue is: Did our guys give their all? They gave their all.”
Holyfield said Juarez and Williams had legitimate complaints about the officiating and the scoring, respectively.
“What I like about pro boxing is that you have a chance to knock a guy out if the judges don’t do the right thing,” Holyfield said.
U.S. team manager Gary Toney said he considered protesting the Williams bout: “We felt Ricardo landed more punches than were scored and won the bout, but we knew we were already protesting one fight and we didn’t want to make it look like sour grapes.”
When boxing wrapped up for the dozen weight divisions Sunday, Cuba led the gold-medal count with four. With two each for Russia and Kazakhstan and one for Uzbekistan, former Soviet republics got five. Britain, France and Thailand got one apiece.