President of the Guyana Boxing Board of Control (GBBC) Peter Abdool says that amateur boxing is the nursery of the professional sport and that is why the GBBC is concerned with what happens at the amateur level.
“You may wonder why the Guyana Boxing Board of Control (GBBC) concerns itself with what goes on in amateur boxing, after all the sports are truly separate. The rules on which they compete are completely different. Scoring is different as are outcomes because of differences in scoring and rules, “ Abdool declared in a recent interview with Stabroek Sports.
“As you probably are aware, professional boxing is a bit of an enigma compared to many other sports as there is always some level of confusion that exists in the minds of most folks with respect to the differences between amateur and professional boxing. In terms of Guyana, perhaps the most salient difference apart from the technical aspects, is the way in which the sports are funded and of course, as in most poor developing countries, funding is always a problem and dictates essentially the pace at which things are achieved.
“Amateur boxing is designed to protect the youngster on his way up. It promotes skills in terms of efficiency, counting every blow and scoring therefore on an accumulation of punches, providing maximum energy per round in a much shorter contest,” he said.
“Professional boxing on the other hand is technically the reverse. It is scored not on accumulation of punches but rather on harder, more effective punches, ring generalship which involves defence and effective aggression. Its focus is not on scoring multitudes of punches but rather on effectively nullifying and dispatching the opponent,” he said.
According to Abdool amateur and professional boxing, despite their similarities, can be viewed as two different sports.
“Despite these obvious differences that literally and technically make them two different sports, amateur boxing nonetheless, provides the rudiments and the core disciplines that allow an amateur fighter to make the transition to a professional fighter far more easily than he would have been able to, without an amateur background. It gives him a rock-solid foundation from which to launch a successful professional career. In consequence, it is usually the loss of amateur fighters to professional ranks, natural attrition as it were, that is the greatest and best qualified source of talent available to the professional ranks. Essentially therefore, it is our nursery. In Guyana there is remarkable attestation to this as many of our country’s greatest achievers in professional boxing also had sterling careers in amateur boxing. In fact, even our coaches and our cornermen have themselves been amateur boxers and many of them former champions,” said Abdool.
He gave as examples the following :Andrew Murray Jr (deceased), Adrew “Sixhead” Lewis (deceased), Patrick Forde (deceased), Lennox Blackmore, Michael Benjamin, Wayne Braithwaite, Vivian Harris, Gairy St. Clair, Terrence Poole, Jeff Roberts, Seibert Blake, Lennox Allen, Leon Moore, Dexter Marques, Clive Atwell, Calvin Garraway, Reginald Forde, Michael Parris, Courtney Atherley (deceased), Lennox Beckles (deceased) , Lionel Ifill, Wencel Thomas, Winfield Braithwaite and Mark Harris (deceased).
“Incredibly, most of the amateur boxers with the exception of Parris never made it to the Olympics or even the regional eliminators but many, nonetheless went on once the opportunity presented itself, to become world champions or substantial and outstanding professionals and for the record, Guyana has produced eight world champions and I suspect in the period encompassing Andrew Lewis 2001 to 2006 in which we had five (5) standing world champions at one time, we may very well have been at that particular time, the country with the highest amount of standing world champions per capita in the world,” he declared.
