AIBA president Dr. Ching-Kuo Weu warned Irish boxer Michael Conlan, who blasted AIBA as being “corrupt” in a expletive-laced outburst after he lost to Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin in the quarter-finals of the Rio Olympic Games, that he will be sanctioned for his outburst.
Conlan claimed he was robbed of a rightful win and vowed never to fight again in any AIBA-organized competition. The world champion also accused Russia of influencing judges.
The AIBA president noted that, “(Tishchenko) never said anything. (Levit) never said anything. They all accept the result. But (Conlan), he immediately showed his finger to the referee-judges. The IOC says this is totally unacceptable. You cannot humiliate people. They are officials. He put himself in a difficult position, I can tell you. A lot of disciplinary action will follow. You should show proper behavior. If you are not happy about the result, you cannot humiliate in public our referee-judges.
“That has already drawn a lot of people’s attention who want to punish him, so we are going to have a disciplinary commission for the case.”
Conlan said, “AIBA are just corrupt. They’ve robbed me of my Olympic dream,” after losing on points in a unanimous decision that, to some observers, seemed at odds with what they had witnessed.
Conlan said, “Obviously Russia can’t dope this time so they are obviously paying the judges a lot more. I will never box an AIBA competition again. Not APB, not WSB, not world championships or Olympic Games. Corruption runs deep… I just think they are rotten to the core.”
Conlan, who had been the last Irish boxer left in the tournament, lost 28-29 on all three scorecards. The three judges – from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Poland – all gave Conlan the second round 10-9 10-9 10-9 but scored the first and last in favor of his rival.
Conlan claimed the Russian “ was completely surprised (to win). He roared like he’d won the Olympic gold… He knows he didn’t win.”
Boxing Scene reported that AIBA President Ching-Kuo Wu has vowed to make Conlan pay for his outburst at the games and says he won’t allow him to get away with those statements.
The AIBA president noted that “You can go through the right channel to say, ‘OK, may I have the chance to really review this bout?’
We do have the ability to review. This bout particularly, with his behavior that drew a lot of attention, we wanted to review whether it’s correct or not. … Judges have no intentions. Why do (you think) they hate your country? The judges, why do they want it in favor of this (country) over the other one? There’s no reason. But since that happened, we want to totally review our system, how to improve in our mind.
“Maybe five judges will score all fights, and all scores will be open. No more computer selection. I proposed these changes to our referee-judge management. We look at five and select three by computer, only showing the three. Maybe in the future we should change it to all five judges all showing, nothing to hide. It will be transparent. We will continue to work to make it in a more perfect condition.”