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WorldNet Service Installation Disk - Cybercathlon Games and Interactive Tour of Olympic Museum (1996).ISO
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00815_Field_st18.txt.txt
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1996-06-03
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Boxing dates back thousands of
years. Today's bouts resemble
those held at the ancient Olympic
Games, where boxers wore
leather straps wrapped around
their hands to protect them.
Boxing was introduced in the
Olympics in 686 BC, but eventually
the sport became too brutal -- the
Romans developed violent
versions of boxing which often
ended in bloody deaths.
By the late 1600s, boxing had
become a professional sport in
Europe, with money prizes going
to the winners. Toward the end
of the 19th century, Americans
became interested in amateur
boxing. The sport was practiced
almost exclusively in the US and
Britain at the turn of the century. It
is no wonder that the US took
every boxing medal at the 1904
Olympics -- all the competitors
were American.
In Olympic-style boxing, there are
12 different weight classes,
ranging from 106 lbs. to 201+ lbs.
Only men participate in Olympic
Boxing. The list of Olympic Boxing
Gold Medal winners who went on
to become heavyweight
champions includes Cassius Clay,
later to become Muhammad Ali,
Floyd Patterson, George Foreman
and Joe Frazier. But the greatest
Olympic boxer ever, never turned
pro. Cuban Teofilo Stevenson
won Gold three times, in 1972,
1976 and 1980, and probably
would have won a 4th medal if
Cuba hadn't boycotted the 1984
Los Angeles Games.
While the US and Cuba have
produced many, many Gold Medal
winners (the US alone has won
nearly 100 Boxing medals), great
boxers have come from many
countries on every continent
through the years.
The introduction of computerized
scoring, which instantly tallies
results and maintains databases to
keep track of the judges' scoring
patterns, has been designed to
detect potential inconsistencies or
biases, a not uncommon problem
in Olympic Boxing events.