Rules of Men's Olympic boxing
Vikas Krishnan in his bout against Errol Spence.
Boxing has been historically associated with controversies and the London Olympics doesn’t seem to be any different. India’s Vikas Krishan lost his bout after an appeal despite winning the contest on points, in front of thousands of spectators, three days back. Despite adopting a new scoring system, boxing couldn’t stay away from controversies in this edition of the Games.
Here’s a look at the rules and format of boxing in the on-going Olympics.
Rules :
Points are awarded by 5 judges to a boxer for landing blows on the opponent.
A blow must land, without being blocked or guarded, on the front or sides of the opponent’s head or body above the waist to have a scoring value. Each valid blow gets a point only if it is landed by the knuckle part of the hand (covered by the glove).
No blows are allowed below the waist or to the back or using back of the hand or while holding the ropes.
A boxer can be given three warnings before being disqualified for breach of rules.
Scoring :
Judges can award points for as many blows as they see during each round.
Each boxer’s score for a round is calculated by taking three of the five closest scores awarded by each judge.
The three closest scores are taken and average is calculated. This becomes the boxer’s score.
For example, if a boxer gets scores of 1,2,3, 5 and 6 from the five judges, the scores of 1,2,3 are taken and the average of the three, which is 2, becomes the boxer’s score.
If all the 5 scores are too close to each other, the lowest and highest of the scores are removed. The average of the remaining scores is calculated and this becomes the boxer’s score.
In case both boxers’ final scores are tied, the high and lowest scores of each boxer are removed and the rest are calculated. The boxer with the higher score after this is declared the winner.
If the scores are still tied, each judge is asked to decide who they think is the winner and whichever boxer gets the majority decision from the five judges is declared the winner.
A bout can also be won if the referee stops the match in case a boxer is determined to be unfit to continue or injured, or receives hard blows to the head.
A win can also be declared by knock-out (opponent fails to stand up after count of 10 seconds) or disqualification.
Competition format :
The Olympics Men’s boxing has 10 categories depending on the weight of the competitors ( 49 kg, 52 kg, 56 kg, 60 kg, 64 kg, 69 kg, 75 kg, 81 kg, 91 kg and 91+ kg).
The Women’s boxing has three categories – fly weight (48-51 kg), light weight (57-60 kg) and middle weight (69-75 kg).
The Men’s bouts consist of three rounds of three minutes each while for Women there are four rounds of two minutes each.
The competition is in single elimination format for both events. Both losing semi-finalists get the bronze medal.