How these Olympics can help Professional boxing

By Norm Frauenheim

BEIJING – For years, it looked as if the closest China would ever getto boxing was that tattoo of Chairman Mao on Mike Tyson’s right bicep. Mao banned the sport.

With capitalism flourishing and the Chairman tattooed on virtually every denomination of Chinese currency, however, the fight game can’t be too far behind. It’s not, although its place – its address -- at the Beijing Olympics is almost amusing.

The venue is located not far from the Forbidden City, which – at last check – is not the name of a new Vegas casino.

Some of the world’s most promising amateurs will begin fighting for medals this weekend at the 47-year-old and appropriately named Workers Gymnasium outside of the ancient city’s gates, which might be the first time that boxing has not taken up permanent residence in any locale advertised as forbidden.

It’s a long way from the so-called Olympic Green, home of the Water Cube, Bird’s Nest and all of the other expensive toys the Chinese will show off to the rest of the world during the next couple of weeks.

Yet, it fits well, so well in fact that the location, location, location offers tantalizing possibilities for a sport that always outlives attempts to forbid it. Twenty years ago, I was at another Olympics, also in Asia, at the 1988 Seoul Games.

That was Roy Jones Jr. and one of the most infamous moments in Olympic history, no matter what the sport. Old East German police files documented bribes that resulted in the heist that left Jones with a silver medal.

Bought-and-sold judges gave the gold to a South Korean, who has never been heard from since.

Meanwhile, boxing has never been quite the same. With its inexhaustible resiliency, it continues to have great moments. But a key building block was kicked out from under the game’s foundation on the day of the Jones rip-off. Since, Oscar De La Hoya, emerged from an Olympics with a 1992 gold medal in Barcelona..

But 1988 was the last American team that produced fighters who kept the pro business humming at several levels and in multiple weights. More important, perhaps, it was the last time that an Olympics produced a couple of meaningful heavyweights in Lennox Lewis, then a gold medalist for Canada, and Riddick Bowe, an American silver medalist.

After Jones, prospects increasingly stayed away from the Olympic route, often opting to go pro before they were ready. There are countless examples of kids who could have benefitted, even if they had not won a medal. But Jones always loomed as the danger sign: Don’t go there.

Floyd Mayweather Jr did. Remember what happened to him?

Mayweather, the pound-for-pound king before his recent retirement, wound up with dirty bronze at the 1996 Olympics. The world’s best in third place against a bunch of amateurs??? Somehow, I’d venture to say that bronze isn’t locked away in Money May’s vault.

That said, Olympic boxing in the world’s most populous country looks a like a buy-low, sell-high kind of opportunity. In Bejing, there might be a chance to rebuild a vital steppingstone.

Sugar Ray Leonard, a 1976 gold medalist, says the sport needs “a feeder system’’ designed to introduce and market young fighters who can make themselves and the game some money.

De La Hoya’s money says he believes in the same thing. His company, Golden Boy Promotions, has an investment in USA Boxing. Rival promoters are bound to complain about the deal, announced a few weeks ago.

Golden Boy’s alliance with USA Boxing will be perceived as conflict of interest by Bob Arum and Don King, who won’t be happy if the arrangement gives De La Hoya the inside track on signing big-time prospects. But let them whine.

After all the years of living off income generated by Olympic medalists, neither Arum nor King has done much to give anything back to a U.S. Olympic boxing program that has produced only two American gold medalists –long-gone David Reid in 1996 and mostly-idle Andre Ward in 2004 – over the last three Olympiads.

A good boxing show in Beijing could create some real momentum for big-time bouts at casinos in Macau, China’s version of Vegas. A fascinating possibility is that the Chinese appear to have an attraction, a draw in Shiming Zou, a light-flyweight who won bronze at the 2004 Athens Games and gold at the 2007 World Championships in Chicago. He faces a potential challenge from American Luis Yanez, who has been reinstated on the U.S. team and appears to be back in good graces with the American coaching staff.

“Boxing used to be a Western sport,’’ Zou said this week through translators.

It used to be a sport just about everywhere other than Chairman Mao’s China. If it can make a comeback and thrive the way capitalism does in a Communist country, it just might work anywhere, even where Forbidden.