Teófilo Stevenson Lawrence was a Cuban amateur boxer, who competed from 1966 to 1986. He won the Val Barker Trophy (1972) and was honored with the Olympic Order (1987). Stevenson is one of only three boxers to win three Olympic gold medals, alongside Hungarian László Papp and fellow Cuban Félix Savón.
Félix Savón Fabre is a retired Cuban amateur boxer, who competed from 1980 to 2000. Considered one of the all-time greatest amateur boxers, he became three-time Olympic gold medalist, and the World Champion six times in a row, all in the heavyweight division. In 1988, when he was favored by many to win the gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics, Cuban government boycotted the event. Savón is particularly known for having rejected numerous multimillion-dollar offers to defect, leave Cuba permanently to fight Mike Tyson as a professional.
John Tate was the WBA heavyweight champion of the world from 1979 to 1980. As an amateur he won a bronze medal in the heavyweight division at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Eliseo Castillo is a Cuban former professional boxer who competed from 1996 to 2009, holding the NABO cruiserweight title in 2006. He is the younger brother of Heavyweight boxer Elieser Castillo.
Roberto Balado Méndez was a Cuban amateur boxer, who competed from 1986 to 1994. At the 1992 Summer Olympics he won a Gold medal in the men's super heavyweight (+91 kg).
Boxing at the 1984 Summer Olympics took place in the Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California, United States. The boxing schedule began on July 29 and ended on August 11. Twelve boxing events were contested with the participation of 354 fighters from 81 countries. A Soviet-led boycott resulted in the withdrawals of the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany, Bulgaria and other Eastern Bloc nations from boxing competitions.
Odlanier Solís Fonte is a Cuban professional boxer. He has challenged once for the WBC heavyweight title in 2011, and is a former top-rated contender in that division. As an amateur heavyweight, Solis was one of the most celebrated and decorated amateur stars of the 2000s, winning a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics, and three consecutive golds at the World Championships in 2001, 2003, and 2005. Odlanier Solís beat Luis Ortiz multiple times in the amateurs, never losing to him.
Marvis Frazier is an American former professional boxer who fought in the heavyweight division.
Héctor Vinent Cháron was a Cuban amateur boxer, who won the Light Welterweight Gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics and 1996 Summer Olympics. Hector appears in Brin-Jonathan Butler's forthcoming documentary Split Decision. He currently trains athletes at the Istanbul-based gym Mugenhous in Turkey.
Duane Bobick is a retired boxer from the United States. As an amateur he won the gold medal at the 1971 Pan American Games and fought at the 1972 Olympics. He then turned professional in 1973 and retired in 1979 with a record of 48 wins and four losses, all by knockout.
The Val Barker Trophy is presented every four years to the most "outstanding boxer" at the Olympic Games. In theory, the award goes to the top "pound for pound" boxer in the Olympics. The winner is selected by a committee of International Boxing Association (amateur) (AIBA) officials. The trophy is named after British boxer Val Barker who won the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABA) heavyweight title in 1891, before becoming the secretary of the AIBA between 1926 and 1929.
'Taekwondo at the 2008 Summer Olympics'
James Frederick DeGale is a British former professional boxer who competed from 2009 to 2019. He held the IBF super-middleweight title twice between 2015 and 2018, and regionally the European and British super-middleweight titles between 2010 and 2012.
Badou Johannes Gabriel Jack is a Gambian-Swedish professional boxer. He is a former world champion in two weight classes, having held the WBC super-middleweight title from 2014 to 2017 and the WBA light-heavyweight title in 2017. As an amateur he represented The Gambia at the 2008 Olympics, reaching the first round of the middleweight bracket.
Boxing is a popular sport in Cuba. As of 1992, there were over 16,000 boxers on the island. Across Cuba today there are 494 boxing coaches and 185 facilities. Of the 99,000 athletes in Cuba currently, 19,000 are boxers, including 81 of Olympic competence, even though only 12 make the Olympic team. Professional boxing was banned from 1962 until April 2022.
Claressa Maria Shields is an American professional boxer and mixed martial artist. She has held multiple world championships in three weight classes, including the undisputed female light middleweight title since March 2021; the undisputed female middleweight title from 2019 to 2020; and the unified WBC and IBF female super middleweight titles from 2017 to 2018. Shields currently holds the record for becoming a two and three-weight world champion in the fewest professional fights. As of July 2022, she is ranked as the world's best active female middleweight by BoxRec, as well as the second-best active female boxer, pound for pound, by ESPN and The Ring.
Cuba competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. This was the nation's twentieth appearance at the Summer Olympics. The Cuban team consisted of 124 athletes, 89 men and 35 women, across eighteen sports.
Ash-Shakur Nafi-Shahid Stevenson is an American professional boxer. He is a world champion in two weight classes, having held the WBO junior lightweight title since October 2021, the WBC junior lightweight title since April 2022 and the WBO featherweight title from 2019 to 2020. He is also the Junior lightweight Ring magazine champion as of April 2022. As an amateur, Stevenson represented the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics, winning a silver medal in the bantamweight division. As of June 2022, he is ranked as the world's best junior lightweight by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, BoxRec and ESPN.
The men's super heavyweight event was part of the boxing programme at the 1988 Summer Olympics. The weight class allowed boxers of more than 91 kilograms to compete. The competition was held from 22 September to 2 October 1988. 17 boxers from 17 nations competed.
Jon Weinbach is an American film and television writer and producer. He currently works as the executive producer and executive vice president for Mandalay Sports Media, a media and production company that focuses on sports entertainment programming.
