why there are professional rugby players in the Olympics but not professional boxers?
In: Other
Amateur boxing and professional boxing is very different sports with different rules and competition formats. Amateur boxing is far less powerful and requires more finess and tactic. Knockouts and heavy hits are practically not allowed so boxers have to win on points. This also means that you can host tournaments, which the Olympics does. There is no need for a lengthy recovery period after a match like in professional boxing. So the contestants can enter a new fight every night for the duration of the tournament. You would not be able to hold a professional boxing tournament in the short span of the Olympic games.
Professional Rugby is administered by the same governing body as amateur Rugby and contested under the same rules.
Amateur boxing is under a different ruleset and different governing body to professional boxing, so any active pro boxer (regardless of how good they actually are) is never going to make it through the qualification process. Nor would they want to, since it’d mean not getting paid.
Each individual sports federation gets to set the rules of who is allowed to compete at what events. This is why NBA, NHL and Professional Tennis players can play in the Olympics but professional boxers can’t.
There’s about 43 professionals in the Tokyo Olympics this year, though only like 9 of those have more than 3 Pro fights
The rule changed in 2016 to allow it in Rio, only 3 pros competed then, but now a lot more are.
But it’s not like huge names or anything, like Lomachenko is Ukraine’s ‘ambassador’ or something instead of competing even though he’s got 2 gold already and he might very well win if he did.
Latest Answers