Some Olympic boxing decisions are still too unbelievable to be true, no matter who is running the show. Thursday night produced another maddening swing in the bout result which utterly enraged anyone inside the North Paris Arena who wasn’t from host nation France; or among the judges.
This time it cost Daina Moorehouse her chance of progressing from the last 16 round of the women’s 50kg division when denied the decision against her French opponent Wassila Lkhadiri.
Moorehouse kept her relative cool afterwards, while most of those in the know were fuming, as Lkhadiri fights for on for an Olympic medal.
Somehow the judges conspired to award Lkhadiri the split decision win on points, 4-1, and while the home support cheered wildly, it couldn’t fully drown out the jeering coming from other sections of the arena.
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Ireland boxing head coach Zaur Antia threw his arms up in the air in disgust when that decision was announced.
“If you have eyes, you know, every round was 5-0,” Antia said later. “But when I saw the first round was 3-2, I knew.”
The 22-year-old “Pocket Rocket” from Enniskerry, who was making her Olympic debut, was always going to have her work cut against her older, taller and more experienced opponent, who won bronze at the 2023 World Championship.
By the end it was impossible not to get some sense that Moorehouse was up against the judges too, who scored the crucial second round 4-1 in favour of Lkhadiri. That ultimately decided the outcome of the fight despite Moorehouse clearly controlling that round with her display of aggression and brilliant combinations of left and right hooks
Worse still, one of the judges had awarded round one and two to Lkhadiri, and the other four had them level, meaning Moorehouse had to attack more in the last round.
She came on full throttle again in the third, attacking Lkhadiri with ever-increasing intent, but still the judges somehow scored it 4-1 in favour of the 28-year-old French boxer.
“You know when you’re getting beaten, but I definitely didn’t feel like I was losing,” said Moorehouse, who was up on three cards after the first round.
“I knew they [the home crowd] were going to boo me. I knew there would have been screams for her, but I just knew if I performed and took it out of the judges’ hands that I would have got the decision.
“I definitely feel like I didn’t take any big shots, even the shots I did take were just stupid jabs, or like a stupid little hook over the top. I pushed on in that third round thinking surely I have this. I just went for it.”
In the final bout of the night, Jack Marley gave it his all against Davlat Boltaev from Tajikistan in his quarter-final, where a victory would have meant he became Ireland’s first Olympic medal winner in the heavyweight division, but he also lost that on split decision, 4-1, this one at least not contentious.
The 21-year-old from Sallynoggin, who fights out of Monkstown Boxing Club, lost the first round 4-1, and also the second 4-1, where he got a cut over his right eye. And despite battling until the end, there was no disputing this win for the 25-year-old Asian Games champion, who has also won four fights on the professional circuit.
The Moorehouse decision, however, was right up there with the one which robbed Michael Conlan of his place in the semi-final in Rio in 2016. In that bout, Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin was so badly injured that he was unable to fight in the semi-final but still collected a bronze medal.
In the immediate aftermath of Conlan’s bantamweight he blasted boxing’s world body AIBA as “corrupt”, “rotten to the core”, and saying officials had robbed him of his dream.
AIBA was later rebranded the World Boxing Federation, but after being suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over governance issues, including alleged corruption, the IOC has been in charge of Olympic boxing since Tokyo.
Olympic boxing is not part of the Los Angeles programme in 2028, the IOC stating they won’t run the show there, and it won’t be added back unless the IBA clean up their act.
“I actually don’t know what to say,” added Moorehouse about the future of Olympic boxing. “Some judging is okay, some judging is not. But I think you definitely have to take a look at the judges and the refs.”
It also came the night after Aoife O’Rourke’s Olympic journey at 75kg was ended by Poland’s Elzbieta Wojcik, after that descended into a messy fight where none of the judging appeared consistent.
So the team of 10 Irish boxers in Paris has been reduced to two, Michaela Walsh out on Friday (2.46 Irish time) against Svetlana Kamenova Staneva from Bulgaria in her last 16 contest in the 57kg. Kellie Harrington is already assured of at least a lightweight bronze medal.
